‘La nature à l’homme s’allie Pour châtier comme il le faut L’orgueilleuse mélancolie Qui vous fait marcher le front haut.’ In another poem (_Autre_) he calls to his chosen mates: ‘Allons, frères, bons vieux voleurs, Doux vagabonds Filous en fleur Mes chers, mes bons, ‘Fumons philosophiquement, Promenons nous Paisiblement: Rien faire est doux.’ As one vagabond feels himself attracted by other vagabonds, so does one deranged mind feel drawn to others. Verlaine has the greatest admiration for King Louis II. of Bavaria, that unhappy madman in whom intelligence was extinct long before death, in whom only the most abominable impulses of foul beasts of the most degraded kind had survived the perishing of the human functions of his disordered brain. He apostrophizes him thus: ‘Roi, le seul vrai Roi de ce siècle, salut, Sire, Qui voulûtes mourir vengeant votre raison Des choses de la politique, et du délire De cette Science intruse dans la maison, ‘De cette Science assassin de l’Oraison Et du Chant et de l’Art et de toute la Lyre, Et simplement et plein d’orgueil et floraison Tuâtes en mourant, salut, Roi, bravo, Sire! ‘Vous fûtes un poète, un soldat, le seul Roi De ce siècle ... Et le martyr de la Raison selon la Foi....’ Two points are noticeable in Verlaine’s mode of expression. First, we have the frequent recurrence of the same word, of the same turn of phrase, that chewing the cud, or _rabâchage_ (repetition), which we have learnt to know as the marks of intellectual debility. In almost every one of his poems single lines and hemistiches are repeated, sometimes unaltered, and often the same word appears instead of one which rhymes. Were I to quote all the passages of this kind, I should have to transcribe nearly all his poems. I will therefore give only a few specimens, and those in the original, so that their peculiarity will be fully apparent to the reader. In the _Crépuscule du soir mystique_ the lines, ‘Le souvenir avec le crépuscule,’ and ‘Dahlia, lys, tulipe et renoncules,’ are twice repeated without any internal necessity. In the poem _Promenade sentimentale_ the adjective _blême_ (wan) pursues the poet in the manner of an obsession or ‘onomatomania,’ and he applies it to water-lilies and waves (‘wan waves’). The _Nuit du Walpurgis classique_ begins thus: ‘Un rythmique sabbat, rythmique, extrêmement Rythmique.’... In the _Sérénade_ the first two lines are repeated _verbatim_ as the fourth and eighth. Similarly in _Ariettes oubliées_, VIII.: ‘Dans l’interminable Ennui de la plaine, La neige incertaine Luit comme du sable. ‘Le ciel est de cuivre, Sans lueur aucune. On croirait voir vivre Et mourir la lune. ‘Comme des nuées Flottent gris les chênes Des forêts prochaines Parmi les buées. ‘Le ciel est de cuivre, Sans lueur aucune. On croirait voir vivre Et mourir la lune.