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 Atkinson (poet) William Atkinson (poet) William Atkinson (1757–1846), was an English poet. Atkinson was born at Thorp Arch, in the ainsty of the city of York, in 1757, and was the son of a clergyman. He was admitted a sizar of Jesus College, Cambridge, 29 December 1775, graduated B.A. in 1780, was elected a fellow of his college, and proceeded to the degree of M.A. in 1783. Having taken orders he was appointed lecturer at the parish church of Bradford, in Yorkshire, and subsequently, in 1792, he was presented by the lord chancellor to the rectory of Warham All Saints, in Norfolk.