The works included in Wisdom are not only the result of the poet's religious inspiration. In it, Verlaine says that as a man he is hardly released from his vices ("Deceptively the Beautiful Days ..."), that he has been starved for a forgiving affection ("Dear Hands ...") and is overcome by the longing to achieve the calm calmness / "The Heaven Is Over covers ... ". The confessional tone that dominates Wisdom should not mislead us and unfairly neglect the poems such as "Striking rows of knits ..." that remind us of the precisely refined style of the collection "Romance without words."
With this poem, the poet, Verlaine , does not want to convince us, nor does he trust us, but prefers delicately to inspire us with his new perception of people and nature. Forced to support only his work as a writer, Verlaine quickly composed the collection "Ever and Recently", which includes many of his poems, published in various magazines from 1867 to 1884. His famous poem "Poetic Art", written in 1874, was published in a magazine in 1882. The emerging, in the meantime, novel by Huysmans "A Rebours" affirms the glory of Verlaine as the "leader of the poets-decadents" in France. Many of the poems included in this collection were written during the prisoner's stay. There are two cycles combined - one with the title "Ever", the other called "Recently". The first cycle includes, besides the prologue, three titles: "Sonnets and Other Poems", "Youth Poems" and "Like Many Others". The second consists of a prologue and five poems: "Crime Amoris," "The Mercy of God," "The Infinity in the End," "The Sworn Don Juan," and "In Love in the Devil," in which one can find the attraction of absorbed in the Gothic atmosphere characteristic of some narratives and novels that emerged during the Romantic era.
In the first part of the collection is included a series of bitter descriptive poems written between 1867 and 1870, such as Piero, Clown and Morning Prayer. During the same period, Verlaine created several poems that exposed various public injustices such as "The Soldier Plowman", "The Wonder", "Wolves" and "Evening Soup". In addition to some sort of diabolical narrative in poems, in the second part appear some original original works, probably written in prison, such as "Kaleidoscope" and "Pictures for a Gross". In "Once Upon A Time", Verlaine returned to the more distant past when poetry was a confession in which memories, remorse, and regrets were made. From the distant past, the images of "Laura and Petrarka" , "Berenis" and "The Virgin" emerge. In the recent past, the dramatic twists and turns accompanying the poet's intimate relationship with his friend Rimbaud/ "Crimen amoris" / are located. In a letter to a literary critic (5 February 1883), Verlaine confesses that he has not staked any sort of unifying theme in his book "Ever and Recently", but has simply gathered the poems he created during the period 1867-1874.