Poésies choisies de André Chénier
Chapter 15
L. 30. _comme un songe._ In the _Odyssey_ (xi. 207) the soul of Ulysses' mother vanishes (like a dream). Also _Aen._ vi. 702.
XVII.
L. 1. _Song of Solomon_, i. 6.
Ll. 7-10. _Song of Solomon_, i. 7.
XVIII.
L. 8. _le mol et doux coton._ Cf., in _N.E.D._, _Cotton_. 'Down or soft hair growing on the body.' _Obs. rare_ so F. _coton_=_poil_, 1615, Crooke, _Body of man_, 65: '_Pubes_ doeth more properly signifie the Downe or _cotton_ when it ariseth about those parts.'
L. 11. Ovid, _Heroid._ xv. 93-95.
L. 22. _ce jeune Troyen_, Ganymede.
L. 23. Adonis, whose mother, Myrrha, had before his birth been turned into a tree that distilled myrrh.
XIX.
Ll. 1-8. Shakespeare, _I Henry IV._ iii. l. 214-222. That Chénier was sensible to the magic of this passage argues that, in spite of prejudices, he would recognize beauty wherever he found it.
L. 11. _Car le_... Becq de Fouquières conjectures that the poet would have written 'car le _bel Endymion_...,' or rather 'car le _dieu d'amour_...,' but was prevented by the metre.
L. 13. The song at the beginning of the fourth act of _Measure for Measure_ gave Chénier the idea of these lines.
XX.
Ll. 11-20. An imitation of Bion, _Idyll_ iv.
L. 15. _et sa voix_... _Et_ here introduces a consequence, as in: 'Plus je vous envisage, _Et_ moins je me remets, monsieur, votre visage,' Racine, _Plaideurs_, II, iv; or in 'give him an inch, _and_ he take an ell.' Cf. p. 63, IX, l. 1.
L. 20. _tu fais mes amours._ _Faire_ here is synonymous with _être_ as in '_faire_ l'admiration de tous.'
L. 28. _Te bêler mes amours._ For another instance of this transitive use of _bêler_ see p. 46, XXXIII, l. 10.
L. 32, _Plutôt que te laisser._ After _que_ following a comparative, modern visage prefers _de_ before the infinitive. See Haase, § 88.
XXIII. LE SATYRE ET LA FLÛTE.
L. 1. _Toi, de Mopsus ami!_ Ironical. 'That thou never wast!' This beginning shows that these lines were meant as part of an eclogue: the subject to be two shepherds disputing the prize of singing. Mopsus is an excellent singer and poet mentioned in Virgil, _Ecl._ v. Berecynthus is a mountain in Phrygia on which the mysteries of Cybele were celebrated.
L. 3. _Hyagnis._ According to Apuleius, _Flor._ iii, Hyagnis was the father and teacher of Marsyas, the flute-player.
L. 4. _énervé_, emasculate. '_Semiviro_ Cybeles cum _grege_ iunxit iter,' Martial, iii. 91.
L. 7. _dans ce bui._ _Bui_ is spelt thus in order to rhyme for the eye with _lui_. 'Buis' for 'flute'; a metonymy.
L. 15. _des chiens même._ In poetry the adjective _même_ often remains uninflected. 'Les immortels _eux-même_ en sont persécutés,' Malherbe, i. 279, 26, _Éd. des Grands Écrivains_. 'Un éclat qui le rend respectable aux dieux _même_,' Racine, _Esther_, II. vii. 678, same edition. Haase, § 53, C.
XXIV.
This fragment is taken from the twenty-third idyll of Gessner.
L. 1. _errante à travers._ This inflected present participle is an archaism. See Haase, § 91. See also note to p. 25, l. 70, as well as p. 24, l. 61; p. 56, l. 8; p. 62, l. 19.
L. 4. _Le pied-de-chèvre._ The poets of the Pléiade used the compound _chèvre-pied_.
L. 6. _leur risée._ But only _one_ nymph has been mentioned. It is understood that she meant to provide sport for her companions.
XXV.
L. 1. _L'impur et fier époux._ Becq de Fouquières remarks that the he-goat is frequently designated by a periphrasis in Greek and Latin literature.
L. 3. _averti de_, aware of.
XXVI.
This fragment is a translation of the first idyll of Gessner.
XXVII.
L. 6. _La source aux pieds d'argent._ Cf. 'La nymphe aux pieds d'argent,' p. 59, l. 47. Cf. also Milton's '_silver-buskined_ Nymphs,' _Arcades_, 33.
XXIX. A L'HIRONDELLE.
These lines are imitated from an epigram of Evenus of Paras.
L. 1. _Fille de Pandion._ Pandion, son of and king of Athens, had two daughters, Procne and Philomela. Procne was ultimately turned into a swallow and Philomela into a nightingale. See Ovid, _Met._ vi. 412 ff.
L. 10. _A ton nid._ _Nid_ for _nichée_: 'Et portant à son bec son modeste butin, De son _nid_ babillard revient calmer la faim.'--Delille, _En._ xii (in LITTRÉ). In the same way 'nest,' in English, is used for 'brood.' Cf. Virgil, _Georg._ iv. 17, and La Font., _Fables_, X. vii. 17.
XXX.
These lines are imitated from Thomson, _Autumn_, 167-174.
XXXI.
Becq de Fouquières observes that when André Chénier composed this short bucolic fragment the revolutionary storm was raging. Chénier, a _suspect_, threatened with arrest, was sick in body and mind, and had gone to the waters at Forges for a few days' rest.
L. 8. _lent_. _Lent_, in the sense of 'supple, flexible,' is a Latinism twice or thrice used by Chénier, and perhaps nowhere else to be found in French literature. The second instance occurs in his _Art d'aimer_, the third (doubtful) on p. 75, l. 17. 'Un cuir souple et _lent_ thus forms a pleonasm which mars this piece otherwise so neat.
XXXII.
L. 10. The subject might tempt a sculptor.
XXXIII. MNAÏS.
A translation of the ninety-eighth epitaph of Leonidas of Tarentum, _Anal._ t. i, p. 246 (note of André Chénier). The abbreviation means: _Analecta veterum poetarum_, published by Brunck, in three vols.
L. 4. _rendez_, grant. E. _render_ once had this sense. _N.E.D._, s.v. 7.
L. 5. _Par Cérès._ Only women swore by Ceres. Spanheim in _Callimachus_, p. 655 (note of André Chénier).
L. 6. _légère_, slight.
L. 10. _Me bêler les accents...._ Cf. note to p. 41, l. 28.
L. 16. _le sein._ _Sein_ is said of a woman, _mamelle_ of an animal. The word _pis_ (Lat. _pectus_, E. _dug_) would be the proper word here.
L. 17. _Et sera...._ This inversion following the conjunction _et_ was very frequent in the older language. In the seventeenth century it is to be met with only, and but seldom, in Malherbe and La Fontaine. See Haase, § 153 B. André Chénier is right in reviving old forms of expression when they come in handy. And here it cannot be denied that there is a gain in solemnity. Cf. note to p. 64, IX, l. 17.
XXXIV. LES JARDINS.
L. 1. _Secrets observateurs._ Prying into the secrets of nature.
L. 7. _les plaintives dryades._ Is this mere poetic diction, as when Byron writes: 'the palm, the loftiest _dryad_ of the woods,' _Island_, II, xi. 17. Though the garden described is one seen by a Frenchman of the eighteenth century, yet it is viewed with the eyes of a Greek pantheist.
L. 11. _fidèle._ True to nature.
L. 12. _Loin du bois, comme si...._ The uninverted order would be: 'Comme si Philomèle allait, loin du bois, chercher.'
L. 15. _dont le printemps s'honore_, which Spring boasts.
XXXV. INVOCATION A LA POÉSIE.
L. 5. _Où te faut-il chercher?_ Understand 'Où faut-il te chercher?' The construction is ambiguous, and the sentence might be misunderstood as: 'where is it necessary for thee to seek?'
L. 5. _la saison nouvelle._ The _renouveau_, as our Old poets used to say, i. e. 'Spring.' So, in English, the '_new_ moon' (= F. la _nouvelle_ lune), and Tennyson speaks of 'the _new_ sun' (_Geraint_, 70).
Ll. 6-10. Petrarch, _The Return of Spring_, cclxix.
L. 11. _gracieux._ Not 'graceful' but '_gracious_'--in my opini on at least.
L. 14. _liquides._ A very felicitous qualificative, apposite to both water and verse. Was Chénier the first of French poets to employ the phrase 'vers _liquides_'? Littré at least does not exemplify the use. It will hardly seem a novelty to the English student who has read of '_liquid_ notes, cadences,' &c.
Ll. 15, 16. _Des vers... sont ce peuple de fleurs._ An inversion in which the verb agrees with the predicate. See Ayer, § 212, 2.
XXXVI. A LA SANTÉ.
Ll. 1-3. Compare these opening lines with the envoy or concluding part of _Hylas_, p. 28, l. 43.
L. 9. _jeunesse prudente._ In the sense of Latin _prudens_, 'wise.' Prudence is generally considered as an attribute of old age. 'La _prudence_ est le fruit de la longue vie,' says the French (Sacy's) translation of the Bible, where the English Bible has: 'In length of days (is) understanding,' Job xii. 12.
L. 10. _Pâlit._ _Pâlir sur des livres_ is a French idiom whose English equivalent would be 'to pore over books.'
L. 23. _caresses d'amours._ The s in _amours_ is for the rime.
ÉLÉGIES.
I.
Ll. 1-4. Horace, _Od._ iii, 12.
Ll. 7, 8. Tibulius, I. viii. 7.
L. 20. _Le suit encor._ This hyperbole, frequent in poetry, Chénier seems to have been particularly fond of. Cf. note to p. 62, l. 39.
L. 22. _nymphes._ _Nymphe_, as well as _coursier_ (l. 24), belonging to the poetic diction of those days, strike us as blemishes. But if we were to demur at such details we could hardly read anything written in the now accepted style.
II.
Ll. 1-8. Imitated from Horace, _Od._ iii. 4.
L. 13. _Seul_ Elliptical: 'when I am alone.'
L. 19. _distraits_, diverted from their uneasy, anxious thoughts.
Ll. 21-28. Imitated from Horace, _Od._ III. iv.
Ll. 23. _Catile._ Catilus and Tibur are one and the same place, now Tivoli (l. 26): _Moenia Catile_ in Horace.
L. 24. _Blandusie._ Horace, _Od._ iii. 13, celebrates its fountain.
L. 26. _Tivoli_, i.e. Tibur, where Horace's villa stood.
L. 27. Horace, _Od._ II. xix.
L. 35. Theocritus, _Id._ iii. 12. _Bruyante abeille_ is of course a nominative in apposition to _Je_. So with _rose_, &c.
L. 36. _les délices_, the sweets.
Ll. 37. _Anthol._ v. 84.
L. 38. _étamine._ A. Chénier seems to have used _étamine_, properly the stamen or male organ of flowers, for the pollen or fecundating dust which is secreted by the stamen. Cf. note to p. 27, l. 30.
L. 47. Anacreon, _Od._ xx. The thought, as a lover's wish, is hackneyed.
L. 61. _périsse l'amant que satisfait la crainte!_ The meaning, not very obvious, but explained by the following lines, is: Beshrew that lover who is content to frighten his mistress into fidelity.
III. AUX FRÈRES DE PANGE.
The following desponding lines were written by Chénier just before undertaking a journey to Switzerland and Italy. His friends, finding him in a very bad state of health, prevailed upon him to accompany them. His spirits seem to have been very low at that time, as appears from the thoughts of death he gives expression to, and numerous are the passages in which the melancholy mind of Chénier gloats upon death.
L. 1. _je suis prêt à descendre._ Grammarians have long distinguished between _près de_ and _prêt à_, but writers never did, until lately, when _prêt à_ was restricted to expressing 'ready to' and _près de_ 'on the point of.'
L. 3. _linceul._ In the _Dictionnaire des rimes françaises_, by Jean Le Febvre, Paris, 1587, _linceuil_ and _linceul_ are given. Littré observes that both pronunciations are heard.
L. 13. _reliques._ The English student is likely to overlook this word, as English 'relics' means both (1) what remains as a memorial of a departed saint, martyr, or other holy person, and (2) the remains of a person, the body of one deceased. But this latter sense is of very rare occurrence in French, and Chénier uses it because, being seldom used, it is still all but novel. He thinks it 'fine and sonorous,' and proceeds to observe that Racine has it twice. Alfred de Musset, after him, employed _reliques_ figuratively in; 'Les morts dorment en paix dans le sein de la terre; Ainsi doivent dormir nos sentiments éteints; Ces _reliques_ du coeur ont aussi leur poussière; Sur leurs restes sacrés ne portons pas les mains.' Yet it is easy to see that in this instance both senses are implied.
L. 24. _qu'il dut vivre longtemps._ All editions, and our present selection after them, print _dut_ without a circumflex accent. _Dût_ is in fact the imperfect of the subjunctive used, as was usual in the older language and is still occasional in seventeenth-century French, for the pluperfect of the subjunctive, as in: 'Mais puisque son dédain, au lieu de le guérir, Ranime ton amour qu'il _dût_ faire mourir. Sers-toi de mon pouvoir,' Corneille, _Clit._ II. iv. 484. So here _dût_ stands for _eût dû = aurait dû_. See Haase, § 66 B.
L. 25. _le meurtre jamais n'a souillé mon courage._ Tibullus, iii. 5. 5 ff. When Chénier speaks of murder he has duelling in his mind, which he deprecated in his prose works. He also takes _courage_ in its older sense, frequent in the great French classics, and the oldest sense, recorded in English, of 'the heart as the seat of feeling, thought, &c.; spirit, mind, disposition, nature.'--_N.E.D._
L. 44. _et voilà que je meurs_, and behold I die: a Biblical term.
L. 49. _mes feux._ An instance of the conventional language of love, now exploded, like F. _flamme_ and E. _flame_.
L. 52. _L'ennui._ _Ennui_ here says something more than its adoption into English would suggest. The English student, in order to realize its force, should refer to its earlier adoption represented by the form _annoy_. The word originated, according to Diez, in the Latin phrase _est mihi in odio_. For the weakened sense of _ennui,_ see p. 57, l. 41.
L. 53. _à_, for.
L. 56. _N'allument... un... trépas._ A bold phrase. The passage is from 'allumer une fièvre,' through 'allumer une fièvre mortelle,' to 'allumer une mort.'
L. 61. _amour... mutuelle._ _Amour_ in the feminine is an archaism. _Amour_, Lat. _amor_, was feminine in Old French, as all such derivatives were and still are: _douleur_, _peur_, &c. Littré, s.v., Rem. 2; cf. p. 61, l. 18.
IV. AU CHEVALIER DE PANGE.
L. 27. Tibullus, ii. 1. 67.
L. 28. Becq de Fouquières, in his notes, gives an epigram of Julianus (with the reference _Anth._, _Pl._ 588), which he observes has inspired this thought.
L. 35. _Tout, mais surtout les champs sont restés._ _Tout_ and _les champs_ really belong to different propositions and the verb agrees with _les champs_. Cf. 'Somewhat, and in many cases a great deal, _is_ put upon us.'--Butler, _Analogy_, Part I.
L. 44. _L'astre_, the sun, or Phoebus Apollo.
L. 92. _De leur voix argentine._ 'The silvery voice of glasses' is pretty. André Chénier is depicting a true heathenish paradise.
L. 98. _ingrat à._ We should rather say now _ingrat envers_. Many adjectives, Haase observes (§ 125 B), now followed by _envers_, _pour_, _avec_, _de_, &c., were constructed with _à_, e.g. 'A moins que d'être ingrate _à_ mon libérateur.'--Corneille, _Andr._ v. 2, 1573.
L. 97. _Qu'à ton tour_... May, in return for thy ingratitude, the fair one...
L. 102. _Ne t'ait vu de sa vie._ May she pretend that she never saw you before.
V.
M. Dezeimeris (_Leçons diverses et remarques sur le texte de divers auteurs_) has shown that Chénier, in this elegy, had borrowed not a few hints from Ausonius, _Epistola_ X.
L. 1. _solitaires divines._ Which is the noun, which the adjective? _Solitaire_ must be the noun (though certain critics have expressed the opinion that it is _divine_ which is the noun). Firstly, there is the masculine noun 'un solitaire,' and it is hard to see why there should not be a feminine, 'une solitaire.' Secondly, the subsequent lines show that Chénier addresses the Muses as lovers of solitude, and it is more logical that the predominant idea should be embodied in the noun, not in the epithet.
L. 3. _Nîme._ Nîmes (earlier Nismes), in the dep. Gard. The final _s_ has been dropped to admit the elision of the _e_. 'Nîmes égare' would have sounded most unnatural.
L. 5. _aux bords de Loire._ The omission of the definite article before Loire and Garonne is archaic. It was the current practice in the sixteenth century, and still occurs occasionally in the seventeenth.--Haase, § 3 B. It is to be noticed that in the next line Chénier writes 'ces nymphes _du_ Rhône,' and, in fact, the omission of _le_ before _Rhône_ seems hardly possible. It is difficult to account for such anomalies. A few individual relics of former usage have thus survived. One of these is the phrase 'entre Sambre et Meuse.'
L. 7. _son flambeau vous luit._ Such constructions, where _à_ followed by an indirect object, or implicitly contained in the dative of the unstressed personal pronoun, where the present language uses _pour_, were quite current formerly, and, though uncommon, may still be used.--Haase, § 125 B.
L. 8. _Dansantes._ The predilection of Chénier for the inflected present participle has now been illustrated by many instances. See p. 24, l. 61; p. 25, ll. 70, 89; p. 42, XXIV, l. 1.
Ll. 9-12. Cf. Cowley (_Essays: Of Agriculture_): 'One might as well undertake to dance in a crowd, as to make good verses in the midst of noise and tumult.'
'As well might corn as verse in cities grow; In vain the thankless glebe we plough and sow, Against th' unnatural soil in vain we strive, 'Tis not a ground in which these plants will thrive.'
L. 15. _les rapides chars._ Conventionally poetical for _carrosses_, which, in those days, would have been the proper word. In the same way _airain_ should have been _fer_ (_cercles_ = tires).
L. 17. _ne me soient point avares._ See note to p. 56, l. 7.
L. 21. _Dormir._ The more modern construction would be _de dormir_. See Hasse, § 87. An echo of La Fontaine, who divided his life into two parts, spent 'L'une à dormir, et l'autre à ne rien faire.'
L. 22. _le doux oubli d'une vie._ Horace's _Oblivia vitae_.
L. 31. _dans Sichem._ This is the wording of the older translation of the Bible. Ostervald's translation has '_à_ Sichem.'
L. 33. _un amoureux courage._ We here touch the point where _courage_ = 'l'ensemble des passions qu'on rapporte au coeur' merges into _courage_ = 'fermeté qui fait supporter ou braver le péril, la souffrance,' as Littré defines the two meanings.
L. 35. Horace's well-known wish (_Sat._ II. vi).
L. 42. _aux champs._ For the substitution of _à_ for _dans_ see note to p. 16, l. 308.
L. 45. _Avoir amis, enfants, épouse._ The omission of the indefinite article before _épouse_ is quite normal in an enumeration. It is a feature of the old language. Besides 'avoir femme et enfant,' which is also an enumeration, we still say 'prendre femme.'
L. 49. _aimable mensongère._ Chénier avails himself of a source of derivation always open. He turns the adjective _mensonger_ into a noun. This had already been done by Marot: 'De moi n'aura _mensonger_ ne buveur Bien ne faveur,' iv. 308, in Littré, _Hist._
Ll. 49-62. In this passage, a critic observes, we have, as it were, an earnest of the Lamartinian melancholy reverie.
L. 66. _Julie._ The heroine of Rousseau's _Nouvelle Héloïse_.
L. 67. _Clarisse._ Clarissa Harlowe in Richardson's novel of this name.
L. 70. _Clémentine._ The Lady Clementina in Richardson's novel, _Sir Charles Grandison_.
VI. O JOURS DE MON PRINTEMPS...
L. 1. _couronnés de rose_; _rose_ for _roses_, for the sake of the rhyme.
L. 16. _Montigny._ An estate belonging to the brothers Trudaine, situated in Brie, eighteen leagues from Paris.
L. 17. _où la Marne._ At Maroeuil, where the family of his friend de Pange had an estate.
Ll. 19, 20. A reminiscence of an epigram in the _Greek Anthology_ (_Analecta_, t. ii. p. 429, C. viii).
L. 22. _Qu'il... les ménage._ Let him humour them.
Ll. 23, 24. _Qu'il plie... sa tête à la prière, et son âme aux affronts_, is slovenly written, the preposition _à_ having a different meaning in _à la prière_ (for which see note to p. 1, l. 18) and in _aux affronts_.
Ll. 41-44. Amphis in Stobaeus, _Florilegium_, lx.
L. 42. _On pleure._ This _on_ where we should expect _je_ must have been attracted by the _on_ in the sentence immediately preceding, and there is a fine effect in its use instead of the invidious _I_. The avowal, in this generalized shape, gains in discretion.
L. 51. _mon pinceau._ Chénier tried his hand at painting.
L. 57. _à_, by. See note to p. 7, l. 211. Here is a thirteenth-century instance of _à_ in the sense of _by_: 'Me gardez que ne soie prise _à_ beste cuiverte,' _Berte_ (in LITTRÉ). Also this: '_à_ tous se fit aimer,' _Berte_, where we find _à_ constructed with a passive infinitive connected with _se laisser_ or _se faire_, a feature still extant in the seventeenth century: 'Je _me laissai conduire à_ cet aimable guide,' Racine, _Iphig_. II. i. 501. See Haase, § 125, Rem. ii. _à_ = _par_ has lived on in such phrases as: faire faire un habit _à_ un tailleur, voir dire, voir faire, entendre dire _à_ quelqu'un.
L. 71. _lecteur._ It was, in fact, with difficulty that Chénier was prevailed upon to read out his poems. See below, l. 80, and p. 85, ll. 64-74.
L. 73. _Abel._ Abel-Louis-François de Malartic, Chevalier de Fondat, 1760-1804.
L. 76. _nous présentions la main._ Juvenal, _Sat._ i. 15.
L. 77. _Et mon frère et Lebrun._ Marie-Joseph Chénier, 1764-1811, adopted, like André, the military career, which he left after two years, and wrote tragedies, lyrical poems, epistles and satires, and also a few prose works, the most esteemed of which is his _Tableau de la littérature française depuis 1789_, a posthumous work, published in 1815. He was but an indifferent poet.
Pierre-Denis-Écouchard Lebrun, called the French Pindar by his admirers, 1729-1807, a versifier of talent, wrote odes (in which he successively sang Louis XVI, the Republic, and the Empire), elegies, epistles, epigrams (in which he really excelled), and a poem on Nature.
L. 78. _fugitif de._ Becq de Fouquières sees a Latinism here, while quoting two instances from Rousseau and Lebrun. But as Descartes, Bossuet, and Voltaire might be adduced too (see LITTRÉ), it is difficult to accept his statement.
VII. L'ART, DES TRANSPORTS DE L'ÂME...
L. 2. Cf. Boileau: 'C'est peu d'être poète; il faut être amoureux'; and Musset: 'Tu te frappais le front en lisant Lamartine. Ah! frappe-toi le coeur; c'est là qu'est le génie.' Cf. also Milton: 'Poetry should be simple, sensuous, and _passionate_.'
L. 18. _une amour._ See note to p. 53, l. 61.
L. 19. _De sables douloureux_... Chénier suffered from gravel. Cf. p. 66, l. 34.
Ll. 21, 22. Theognis in Stobaeus, _Florilegium_, cxx.
VIII. RESTE, RESTE AVEC NOUS...
This elegy is imitated from Tibullus, III. vi, with perhaps a few reminiscences of Propertius, III. xvii.
L. 15. _ne trouve plus des armes._ Why _des armes_ instead of _ne... plus d'armes_? Because, says Ayer (p. 407), the negation does not bear on the verb, while Haase (§ 119 B., Rem. 1) will have it that it is in order to mark that the negation falls more on the verb than on the object. The latter explanation seems to us to be the correct one. The idea here is: Camille _no longer_ finds in my heart what she was wont to find there, namely, 'des armes.'
L. 19. _Pleurante._ One of those inflected present participles for using which Chénier was censured by his early critics. Were they aware that this particular one occurs twice in Racine? '_Pleurante_, après son char voulez-vous qu'on me voie,' _Androm._ IV. v. 54; 'Que la veuve d'Hector _pleurante_ à vos genoux,' ibid. III. iv. 3. Cf. p. 24, l. 61; p. 25, ll. 70, 89; p. 42, XXIV, l. 1; p. 56, l. 8.
L. 26. _le liège tenace._ One of those periphrases so much in vogue in the eighteenth century. Yet, here, there might be an excuse in the playful tone adopted by the poet. And certainly what follows is in the same humorously dignified diction.
L. 30. _aux pressoirs._ See note to p. 16, l. 308.
L. 37. _je la voi._ See note to p. 17, l. 317.
L. 39. _Son nom, sa voix absente errent dans mon oreille._ Chénier had put the verb in the singular, as is his constant practice (see note to p. 25, l. 74), and the correction was not necessary. This metaphor Chénier seems to have delighted in. He repeats it in _Hermès_: 'Autour du demi-dieu, les princes immobiles Aux accents de sa voix demeuraient suspendus, Et _l'écoutaient encore quand il ne chantait plus_.' Cf. Milton, _Par. Lost_, viii, 1-3.
L. 48, _à ses lèvres saisie_, snatched from her lips.
L. 58. _longtemps._ _Longuement_ would be clearer, or _lentement_, as below, l. 74.