The influential French poet, Symbolist leader, and Decadent Paul Verlaine (1844–1896) was recognized as a groundbreaking writer even in his own lifetime—his stylistic innovations brought a new musicality to French poetry and paved the way for free verse and other twentieth-century techniques and experiments. This selection of poems, with the French text en face, provides a comprehensive selection of Verlaine’s verse together with a lucid introduction illuminating his life and works.

Paul Verlaine, author of works including Romance sans paroles and Sagesse, was elected France’s “Prince of Poets” by his peers in 1894.

“MacIntyre has frequently come as close to achieving the impossible as any translator could hope to come…. All of these renderings have groups of lines which miraculously recreate their originals. Several almost sustain the miracle throughout the entire poems. Finally, the preface and notes afford the soundest and most suggestive brief critique of Verlaine’s work that I know of in English.”—Saturday Review

“Translations of poetry are rarely altogether satisfactory. It is consequently very much to Mr. MacIntyre’s credit that his has been able to capture in English much of that particular quality which distinguished Verlaine’s art.”—Virginia Quarterly Review