# Verlaine's most famous lines

'The long sobs of the violins of autumn', 'It rains in my heart', 'Music before all else': the lines of Paul Verlaine that French pupils learn by heart, checked against the original editions, with the poem and the collection.

- 9 votes · 13 items
- Feb 25, 2026 · Amandine
- https://even.best/en/l/4667/verlaine-s-most-famous-lines

## Top 13

1. **The long sobs of the violins of autumn wound my heart with a monotonous languor.** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — 'Autumn Song', Poèmes saturniens (1866).
2. **I remember the days of old and I weep** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — 'Autumn Song', Poèmes saturniens (1866).
3. **And I go off on the ill wind that carries me here and there, like a dead leaf.** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — 'Autumn Song', Poèmes saturniens (1866).
4. **I often have this strange and piercing dream of an unknown woman whom I love and who loves me** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — 'My Familiar Dream', Poèmes saturniens (1866).
5. **Tell me, you there, what have you done with your youth?** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — Sagesse (1880).
6. **Take eloquence and wring its neck!** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — 'The Art of Poetry', Jadis et naguère (1884).
7. **Your soul is a chosen landscape charmed by masquers and bergamasquers** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — 'Moonlight', Fêtes galantes (1869).
8. **Here are fruits, flowers, leaves and branches, and here is my heart, which beats only for you.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — 'Green', Romances sans paroles (1874).
9. **The sky is, above the roof, so blue, so calm!** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Sagesse (1880), written in prison.
10. **And all the rest is literature.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — 'The Art of Poetry', Jadis et naguère (1884), last line.
11. **It rains in my heart as it rains on the town** (-1 · ▲0 ▼1) — Romances sans paroles (1874).
12. **It is the worst pain of all not to know why, without love and without hate, my heart is in such pain!** (-1 · ▲0 ▼1) — Romances sans paroles (1874).
13. **Music before all else** (-1 · ▲0 ▼1) — 'The Art of Poetry', Jadis et naguère (1884), first line.

How is this ranking ordered? By people's votes: each ▲ adds a point and each ▼ takes one away. Anyone can vote and add what is missing.