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.
William Thompson (poet) William Thompson (poet) Rev. William Thompson (1712 - 1766) was an 18th-century English poet. William Thompson was the son of Rev. Francis Thompson, vicar of Brough in Westmoreland, NW England, who died in 1735; William's date of birth is not known. William Thompson studied at Queen's College, Oxford, which his father had also attended, and graduated with a Master of Arts in 1738, afterwards becoming a fellow of the college. Thompson became rector of Hampton Poyle with South Weston in Oxfordshire. He published his collected poems in two volumes in 1757. He is best known for the long poem "Sickness"