And with the same attentive simplicity with which he found words for the sensations of hearing and the sensations of sight, he found words for the sensations of the soul, for the fine shades of feeling. From the moment when his inner life may be said to have begun, he was occupied with the task of an unceasing confession, in which one seems to overhear him talking to himself, in that vague, preoccupied way which he often had. Here again are words which startle one by their delicate resemblance to thoughts, by their winged flight from so far, by their alighting so close. The verse murmurs, with such an ingenuous confidence, such intimate secrets. That "setting free" of verse, which is one of the achievements of Verlaine, was itself mainly an attempt to be more and more sincere, a way of turning poetic artifice to new account, by getting back to nature itself, hidden away under the eloquent rhetoric of Hugo, Baudelaire, and the Parnassians. In the devotion of rhetoric to either beauty or truth, there is a certain consciousness of an audience, of an external judgment: rhetoric would convince, be admired. It is the very essence of poetry to be unconscious of anything between its own moment of flight and the supreme beauty which it will never attain. Verlaine taught French poetry that wise and subtle unconsciousness. It was in so doing that he "fused his personality," in the words of Verhaeren, "so profoundly with beauty, that he left upon it the imprint of a new and henceforth eternal attitude." 3 _J'ai la fureur d'aimer,_ says Verlaine, in a passage of very personal significance. J'ai la fureur d'aimer. Mon cœur si faible est fou. N'importe quand, n'importe quel et n'importe où, Qu'un éclair de beauté, de vertu, de vaillance, Luise, il s'y précipite, il y vole, il y lance, Et, le temps d'une étreinte, il embrasse cent fois L'être ou l'objet qu'il a poursuivi de son choix; Puis, quand l'illusion a replié son aile, Il revient triste et seul bien souvent, mais fidèle, Et laissant aux ingrats quelque chose de lui, Sang ou chair.... J'ai la fureur d'aimer. Qu'y faire? Ah, laissez faire!