Victor Hugo

The motion of the sea was never till now so perfectly done into words as in these three last lines; but any one to whom the water was as dear or dearer than the land at its love...

And yet, it may be said or thought, the master of masters has shown himself even greater in _Ratbert_ than in _Eviradnus._ This most tragic of poems, lit up by no such lyric int...

Two years before the appearance of _Les Burgraves_ Victor Hugo had begun his long and glorious career as an orator by a speech of characteristically generous enthusiasm, deliver...

Let me be forgiven a seeming blasphemy; but since the time of periphrasis is over the real truth of things must be said of them. Well, then, the great peril of poetry is the ris...

Not till the thirtieth year from the publication of these two volumes was the inexhaustible labor of the spirit which inspired them to cease for a moment--and then, among us at...

In the spring of 1616 the greatest Englishman of all time passed away with no public homage or notice, and the first tributes paid to his memory were prefixed to the miserably g...

Rubis de la fournaise! ô braises! pierreries! Flambez, tisons! brûlez, charbons! feu souverain, Pétille! luis, bûcher! prodigieux écrin D'étincelles qui vont devenir des étoiles...

Three years after the _Châtiments_ Victor Hugo published the _Contemplations_; the book of which he said that if the title did not sound somewhat pretentious it might be called...

J'aime le malheur qui m'éprouve, Et cette ombre où je vous retrouve, Ô vous à qui mon cœur sourit, Dignité, foi, vertu voilée, Toi, liberté, fière exilée, Et toi, dévouement, gr...

In one point it seems to me that this immortal masterpiece may perhaps be reasonably placed, with _Le Roi s'amuse_ and _Ruy Blas_, in triune supremacy at the head of Victor Hugo...

From the magnificent overture to the second series, in which the poet has embodied in audible and visible symbol the vision whence this book was conceived--a vision so far surpa...