II pleut doucement sur la ville... Arthur Rimbaud

Il pleure dans mon coeur

Comme il pleut sur la ville;

Quelle est cette langueur

Qui pénètre mon coeur?

The beautiful quatrain above is by Paul Verlaine, who along with Arthur Rimbaud, Charles Baudelaire, and Stéphane Mallarmé are my favourite 19th century French poets.

Rimbaud was probably the most gifted of the four, but Verlaine was fascinating, he joined the Garde nationale, becoming a Communard and later head of the press bureau, and managed to escape the street fighting of the Semaine Sanglante.

His doomed love affair with Rimbaud and their trip to Britain really earned them the soubriquet of "The Damned Poets".