Poésies choisies de André Chénier
X. Dryas.
L. 5. As in Ovid, Met. xiii. 841, the giant Polyphemus compares himself to Jupiter, so here the child compares himself to his young goat.
Ll. 19-24. A translation of the fourteenth epigram of Anytus, p. 200, vol. i. [of the Anthology]. See also the twenty-ninth of Argentarius, vol. ii, p. 273. (Note of A. Chénier.) Anytus of Tegea lived 300 years before the Christian era.
L. 20. verte cigale. The cicada is brown. Chénier is here thinking of the large green grasshopper (Locusta viridissima).
L. 21. les honneurs. The honours of this tomb, that is, this tomb and its adjuncts destined to honour thy memory.
X. DRYAS.
André Chénier had purposed to write sea-bucolics or idylls, which his notes, in which he indicates the genre of his poems by Greek abbreviations, designate as [Greek: Bouk. enal.] (that is, [Greek: Boukolika enalia]), [Greek: Eid. enal.] (i.e. [Greek: Eidullia enalia]). Dryas is one of them. It appeared for the first time in G. de Chénier's edition, 1874.
L. 4. aux mains. See note to p. 16, l. 308.
L. 6. tout se jette. Tout, i.e. tout le monde, as in 'Femmes, moines, vieillards, tout était descendu.'—La Fontaine, Fables, VIII. ix. 4. The verb agrees with tout, which sums up the enumeration. Ayer, §217, 3 b.
L. 8. Il remplit et couronne. Not of course in the sense in which Milton writes: 'Eve... their flowing cups With pleasant liquors crown'd' (Paradise Lost, v. 444). This sense is unknown in French. But see Rich, Dict. of Roman and Greek Antiq., s.v. 'coronatus.'