Oui, l'oeuvre sort plus belle
D'une forme au travail
Rebelle,
--Vers, marbre, onyx, émail.

The _Parnassiens_ particularly devoted themselves to classical subjects,
and to descriptions of tropical scenes. Their rich, sonorous,
splendidly-moulded language invests their visions with a noble fixity,
an impressive force. Among the gorgeous descriptive pieces of Leconte de
Lisle, the exquisite lyrics of Sully Prudhomme, and the chiselled
sonnets of Heredia some of the finest and weightiest verse of the
century is to be found.

The age produced one other poet who, however, by the spirit of his work,
belongs rather to the succeeding epoch than to his own. This was
BAUDELAIRE, whose small volume--_Les Fleurs du Mal_--gives him a unique
place among the masters of the poetic art. In his form, indeed, he is
closely related to his contemporaries. His writing has all the care, the
balance, the conscientious polish of the _Parnassiens_; it is in his
matter that he differs from them completely. He was not interested in
classical imaginations and impersonal descriptions; he was concerned
almost entirely with the modern life of Paris and the actual experiences
of a disillusioned soul. As intensely personal as the _Parnassiens_ were
detached, he poured into his verse all the gloom of his own character,
all the bitterness of his own philosophy, all the agony of his own
despair. Some poets--such as Keats and Chénier--in spite of the
misfortunes of their lives, seem to distil nothing but happiness and the
purest beauty into their poetry; they only come to their true selves
amid the sunlight and the flowers. Other writers--such as Swift and
Tacitus--rule supreme over the kingdom of darkness and horror, and their