`Verlaine, possessed by the madnesses of love, brimming over with desires and prayers, the rebel railing against the complacent platitudes of society, of love, of language`. Jean Rousselot Verlaine ranks alongside Baudelaire, Mallarme, and Rimbaud as one of the most outstanding poets of late nineteenth-century France whose work is associated with the early Symbolists, the Decadents, and the Parnassiens. Remarkable not only for his delicacy and exquisitely crafted verse, Verlaine is also the poet of strong emotions and appetites, with an unrivalled gift for the sheer music of poetry, and an inventive approach to its technique. This bilingual edition provides the most comprehensive selection of his poetry yet, offering some 170 poems in lively and fresh translations and providing a lucid introduction which illuminates Verlaine`s poetic form within the context of French Impressionism and the poetry of sensation.