"It is at once by way of poetry and through poetry, as with music, that the soul glimpses splendors from beyond the tomb; and when an exquisite poem brings one's eyes to the point of tears, those tears are not evidence of an excess of joy, they are witness far more to an exacerbated melancholy, a disposition of the nerves, a nature exiled among imperfect things, which would like to possess, without delay, a paradise revealed on this very same earth."

You may also like:

• 

  Arthur Rimbaud
  Poet

• 

  Edgar Allan Poe
  Author

• 

  Guillaume Apollinaire
  Poet

• 

  Gustave Flaubert
  Writer

• 

  Honore de Balzac
  Novelist

• 

  Paul Verlaine
  Poet

• 

  Stephane Mallarme
  Poet

• 

  Theophile Gautier
  Poet

• 

  Victor Hugo
  Poet