...these poets here, you see, they are not of this world:let them live their strange life; let them be cold and hungry, let them run, love and sing: they are as rich as Jacques Coeur, all these silly children, for they have their souls full of rhymes, rhymes which laugh and cry, which make us laugh or cry: Let them live: God blesses all the merciful: and the world blesses the poets.

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Rimbaud and Verlaine began a short and torrid affair. The post-operative diagnosis was cancer. Until this time his reading was confined almost entirely to the Bible but he also enjoyed fairy tales and stories of adventure such as the novels of James Fenimore Cooper and Gustave Aimard.

Rimbaud was known to have been a libertine and restless soul travelling extensively on three continents before his death from cancer just after his 37th birthday. For other people named Rimbaud see Rimbaud (surname). Born in Charleville Ardennes he produced his works while still in his late teens—Victor Hugo described him at the time as "an infant Shakespeare"—and gave up creative writing before the age of 20.