Car leur glaive, en entrant, l'a gravé dans mon cœur.
And the rest of the poem is a lyrical declaration of belief in immortality.
We have called the "Lettre à Lamartine" Musset's highest flight, but the "Nuit de Mai" is almost as fine a poem—full of imaginative splendor and melancholy ecstasy. The series of the "Nuits" is altogether superb; with an exception made, perhaps, for the "Nuit de Décembre," which has a great deal of sombre beauty, but which is not, like the others, in the form of a dialogue between the Muse and the poet—the Muse striving to console the world-wounded bard for his troubles, and urging him to take refuge in hope and production:
Poëte, prends ton luth et me donne un baiser;
La fleur de l'églantier sent ses bourgeons éclore.
Le printemps naît ce soir; les vents vout s'embraser;
Et la bergeronette, en attendant l'aurore,
Au premier buissons vertes commence à se poser.
Poëte, prends ton luth et me donne un baiser.
That is impregnated with the breath of a vernal night. The same poem (the "Nuit de Mai") contains the famous passage about the pelican—the passage beginning