Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, VERLAINE, by EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON


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VERLAINE, by             Poem Explanation     Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Why do you dig like long-clawed scavengers
Last Line: Can blot the star that shines on paris now.
Subject(s): Verlaine, Paul (1844-1896)


Why do you dig like long-clawed scavengers
To touch the covered corpse of him that fled
The uplands for the fens and rioted
Like a sick satyr with doom's worshippers? --
Come! -- let the grass grow there; and leave his verse
To tell the story of the life he led.
Let the man go: let the dead flesh be dead,
And let the worms be its biographers.

Song sloughs away the sin to find redress
In art's complete remembrance: nothing clings
For long but laurel to the stricken brow
That felt the Muse's finger; nothing less
Than hell's fulfillment of the end of things
Can blot the star that shines on Paris now.





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