language of poignant beauty to the deepest sentiments of the age that
was passing away. A ruffian, a robber, a murderer, haunting the vile
places of Paris, flying from justice, condemned, imprisoned, almost
executed, and vanishing at last, none knows how or where, this
extraordinary genius lives now as a poet and a dreamer--an artist who
could clothe in unforgettable verse the intensest feelings of a soul.
The bulk of his work is not large. In his _Grand Testament_--a poem of
about 1500 lines, containing a number of interspersed ballades and
rondeaus--in his _Petit Testament_, and in a small number of
miscellaneous poems, he has said all that he has to say. The most
self-communicative of poets, he has impressed his own personality on
every line that he wrote. Into the stiff and complicated forms of the
rondeau and rondel, the ballade and double ballade, with their limited
rhymes and their enforced repetitions, he has succeeded in breathing not
only the spirit of beauty, but the spirit of individuality. He was not a
simple character; his melancholy was shot with irony and laughter;
sensuality and sentimentality both mingled with his finest imaginations
and his profoundest visions; and all these qualities are reflected,
shifting and iridescent, in the magic web of his verse. One thought,
however, perpetually haunts him; under all his music of laughter or of
passion, it is easy to hear one dominating note. It is the thought of
mortality. The whining, leering, brooding creature can never for a
moment forget that awful Shadow. He sees it in all its aspects--as a
subject for mockery, for penitence, for resignation, for despair. He
sees it as the melancholy, inevitable end of all that is beautiful, all
that is lovely on earth.

Dictes moi où, n'en quel pays
Est Flora, la belle Rommaine;
Archipiada, ne Thaïs--