The French poet Paul Marie Verlaine (1844-1896), one of the most exquisite lyric poets in the history of French literature, ranks with Rimbaud and Mallarmé as one of the major French symbolists of the 19th century.

Paul Verlaine was born in Metz on March 30, 1844. He was the son of an army captain. Verlaine attended the Lycée Bonaparte (today Lycée Condorcet) in Paris, where his favorite subjects were French and Latin. At the age of 14, he sent Victor Hugo his earliest known poem, La Mort. By 1862, the year he received his baccalaureate degree, Verlaine had already developed a disastrous taste for drink that marred his life. In 1866 he published his first collection of verse under a title apparently borrowed from Baudelaire: Poèmes saturniens. Nevermore, Mon rêve familierand especially Chanson d'automne revealed the lovely lyricism and delicate sadness characteristic of...