Since Verlaine’s « Art poétique », one often associates shade with modern poetry, whereas romantic poetry, is supposed to be characterized by an aesthetic of contrast. Marceline Desbordes-Valmore’s Les Pleurs lead us to reconsider such a periodization: though a taste for contrast can be found in this collection of poems, the author avoids any black-and-white or univocal representation, and shows a keen sense of shade, even more at a stylistic level than in the chromatic notes offered by her poems. Many processes of modalisation, attenuation or alteration give the collection its versatility and subtlety. This aesthetic may appear as the sign of a cautious if not modest ethos. Actually, it also reveals will and boldness, it also is a way to deal with a highly complex reality. In her poetry, Desbordes-Valmore aims at making that reality accessible to the reader, without setting it in stone, nor giving it the « unbending colours » of a truth that would be excessively uniform.