Paul Verlaine with Verlaine, Mallarmé, Rimbaud, Paul Valéry, Albert Samain and many others began to be referred to as "Symbolists." These poets would often share themes that parallel Schopenhauer's aesthetics and notions of will, fatality and unconscious forces, and used themes of sex (such as prostitutes), the city, irrational phenomena (delirium, dreams, narcotics, alcohol), and sometimes a vaguely medieval setting. In poetry, the symbolist procedure—as typified by Verlaine—was to use subtle suggestion instead of precise statement (rhetoric was banned) and to evoke moods and feelings through the magic of words and repeated sounds and the cadence of verse (musicality) and metrical innovation.
David Gray (poet) David Gray (poet) David Gray (29 January 18383 December 1861) was a Scottish poet, from Merkland, Kirkintilloch. He died in his hometown aged 23. His friend and fellow poet Robert Buchanan wrote his biography in 1900. The son of a handloom weaver, Gray was born at Merkland, by Kirkintilloch, Dunbartonshire. His parents resolved to educate him for the Free Kirk, and through their self-denial and his own exertions as a pupil teacher and private tutor he was able to complete a course of four sessions at the university of Glasgow. He began to write poetry for "Glasgow Evening Citizen" and