Alfred de Vigny (1797-1863) was a rather austere man, proud of his noble birth and the restrictive demands of the military career which was traditional in his family. His poetry is philosophic and the lessons it teaches are stoic: nature is cruel or indifferent and man must accept his destiny unflinchingly; the thinker is isolated from his fellow-men but only through knowledge can we hope to strive for the best, suffer without complaint, and die gallantly.

• "Alfred de Vigny." Representative French Poetry. Ed. Victor E. Graham. 2nd edn. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1965. 39-49.