Rimbaud To Theodore de Banville

Charleville
May 24, 1870

To Theodore de Banville
c/o M. Alphonse Lemerre, Publisher
passage Choiseul
Paris

CHER MAITRE
This is the season of love; I'm seventeen years old. The age of hopes and fantasies, as they say, and so I have begun, only a child, but touched by the finger of Muse (excuse me if this is banal) to write down my dearest beliefs, my hopes, my feelings, all the things that poets do - this is what I call springtime.