The poem is complete in itself, but it was designed as a fragment of that vast modern epopee, with humanity for the hero, of which _La Chute d'un Ange_ was another fragment. The later poem, vast in dimensions, fantastic in subject, negligent in style, is a work of Lamartine's poetic decline. We are among the mountains of Lebanon, where dwell the descendants of Cain. The angel, enamoured of the maiden Daidha, becomes human. Through gigantic and incoherent inventions looms the idea of humanity which degrades itself by subjugation to the senses, as in _Jocelyn_ we had seen the type of humanity which ascends by virtue of aspirations of the soul. It was a poor jest to say that the title of his poem _La Chute d'un Ange_ described its author. Lamartine had failed; he could not handle so vast a subject with plastic power; but in earlier years he had accomplished enough to justify us in disregarding a late failure--he had brought back the soul to poetry. III Among the romantic poets who made themselves known between 1820 and 1830, ALFRED DE VIGNY is distinguished by the special character of his genius, and by the fact that nothing in his poetry is derived from his contemporaries. Lamartine, Hugo, and, at a later date, Musset, found models or suggestions in his writings. He, though for a time closely connected with the romantic school, really stands apart and alone. Born in 1797, he followed the profession of his father, that of arms, and knew the hopes, the illusions, and the disappointments of military service at the time of the fall of the Empire and the Bourbon restoration. He read eagerly in Greek literature, in the Old Testament, and among eighteenth-century philosophers. As early as 1815 he wrote his admirable poem _La Dryade_, in which, before Andre Chenier's verse had appeared, Chenier's fresh and delicate feeling for antiquity was anticipated. In 1822 his first volume, _Poemes_, was published, including the _Helena_, afterwards suppressed, and groups of pieces classified as _Antiques_, _Judaiques_, and _Modernes_. Already his _Moise_, majestic in its sobriety, was written, though it waited four years for publication in the volume of _Poemes Antiques et Modernes_ (1826). Moses climbing the slopes of Nebo personifies the solitude and the heavy burden of genius; his one aspiration now is for the sleep of death; and it is the lesser leader Joshua who will conduct the people into the promised land. The same volume included _Eloa_, a romance of love which abandons joy through an impulse of divine pity: the radiant spirit Eloa, born from a tear of Christ, resigns the happiness of heaven to bring consolation to the great lost angel suffering under the malediction of God. Other pieces were inspired by Spain, with its southern violence of passion, and by the pass of Roncesvalles, with its chivalric associations.