contraltos; the forms? not those of men or women, but mystic, hybrid
creatures, with hands nervous and pale, and eyes charged with eager and
fitful light..."_un soir équivoque d'automne_"..."_les belles pendent
rêveuses à nos bras_"...and they whisper "_les mots spéciaux et tout
bas_."

Gautier sang to his antique lyre praise of the flesh and contempt of the
soul; Baudelaire on a mediæval organ chaunted his unbelief in goodness
and truth and his hatred of life. But Verlaine advances one step
further: hate is to him as commonplace as love, unfaith as vulgar as
faith. The world is merely a doll to be attired to-day in a modern ball
dress, to-morrow in aureoles and stars. The Virgin is a pretty thing,
worth a poem, but it would be quite too silly to talk about belief or
unbelief; Christ in wood or plaster we have heard too much of, but
Christ in painted glass amid crosiers and Latin terminations, is an
amusing subject for poetry. And strangely enough, a withdrawing from
all commerce with virtue and vice is, it would seem, a licentiousness
more curiously subtle and penetrating than any other; and the
licentiousness of the verse is equal to that of the emotion; every
natural instinct of the language is violated, and the simple music
native in French metre is replaced by falsetto notes sharp and intense.
The charm is that of an odour of iris exhaled by some ideal tissues, or
of a missal in a gold case, a precious relic of the pomp and ritual of
an archbishop of Persepolis.

Parsifal a vaincu les filles, leur gentil
Babil et la luxure amusante et sa pente
Vers la chair de garçon vierge que cela tente
D'aimer des seins légers et ce gentil babil.