Verlaine has left his mark as a supremely musical poet. Titles like La bonne chanson, Romances sans paroles and Ariettes oubliées, the presence of instruments such as ‘violons’, ‘iuth’ and ‘mandoline’, and phrases such as ‘en sourdine’ and ‘sur le mode mineur’ are a token of the affinity between his poetry and the resources of music. ‘De la musique avant toute chose’, he writes in his Art poétique, at a time when Mallarmé is also shaping the spirit of Symbolism by seeking to perfect an allusive language of notes rather than meanings. But Verlaine's music is of a unique kind. It does not have the vast swelling and abating rhythms of Baudelaire, who says ‘La musique souvent me prend comme une mer’, nor does it have the same luxurious harmonic richness. It is very often a diminutive melodic poetry (as in the lines ‘O triste, triste était mon âmé/A cause, à cause d‘une femme’), with single notes recurring at intervals to create the impression of a simple, ingenuous air. At other times it applies a delicate penetrating monotony, with sound-echoes spread so extensively throughout the poem that the borders of structure dissolve and the clarity of theme is submerged. It is almost invariably a suave, unobtrusive music with no grand effects: not lending dramatic accompaniment to the peaks and valleys of intense emotion, as in earlier Romantic poetry, but swathing them in a misty mood so that one can no longer be sure of their outline or feel the acuteness of their contrast. And yet lyricism is not lost: in the background is always the nagging presence of a simple and universal human emotion, melancholy, nostalgia, distress, remorse.