So, having read 'La mort du Loup' and liked it a lot, and reading that Proust (none other) had said that de Vigny's 'La Maison du Berger' was

"The greatest poem of the 19th century," I started reading it about an hour a ago--and, as the French say, Quelle Déception!  Call me gay, but it always puts my back up when a poem (by a man) starts out being addressed to a woman.  Particularly when it's somehow suggested that he has fucked her, might fuck her, or, if things turn out right, will fuck her.  Adieu therefore all possibility of honesty, plain dealing, or objective speech.  Men who have fucked, or are thinking of fucking, a woman, don't mean anything they say, and ordinarily never say anything worth listening to: Nothing in this world is less edifying than the utterance of a man with fucking on his mind, no matter how he puts it, or says it isn't what he's thinking about; though I'll grant that,

               ...La couleur du corail et celles de tes joues

                  Teignent le char nocturne et ses muets essieux.

                   Le seuil est parfumé, l'alcove [ahem] est large et sombre,

                   Et lá, parmi les fleurs, nous trouverons dans l'ombre,

                   Pour nos cheveux unis, un lit [!] silencieux.

says it about it as melodiously and matter-of-factly as the thing can be said:  The nos cheveux unis implies, sweetly and economically, that they're both gonna get naked and let their hair get all tangled together; such that, frankly, I find the words alcove and lit, in context, indelicate and needlessly insistent. Though I still don't get what exactly a "Maison du Berger" is.  I would assume it's a large (four wheeled) hay wain,  or yurt, but that doesn't tell us why it would have "mute axles." Anyway it's nice to know that shepherds have a quiet, commodious place whiere they can go indoors and fuck.