VI. la jeune tarentine. – André Chénier

This touching elegy, Becq de Fouquières observes, was suggested to
Chénier by the following funereal epigram of Xenocritus of Rhodes in the
Greek Anthology: ‘Thy locks are still dripping, unfortunate maid,
O Lysidice, poor shipwrecked creature, dead in the salt flood. As the
waves leapt wild, thou, dismayed by the violence of the sea, fellst out
of the ship; and now on a tombstone are read thy name and that of Cyme,
the place of thy birth, but thy remains have been washed to some chill
shore; a bitter grief to thy father Aristomachus, who, accompanying thee
to the house of thy husband, brought him neither a bride nor a corpse.’

L. 2. Oiseaux chers à Thétis. ‘Dilectae Thetidi alcyones,’ Virgil,
Georg. i. 399.

L. 3. Elle a vécu. A euphemism, adopted from the Latin, for elle est
morte, used in elevated style. Thus Corneille: ‘Non, non; avant ce coup
Sabine aura vécu.’–Horace, II. vi.

L. 4. Camarine, a town in Sicily.

L. 5. l’hymen, the hymeneal song.

L. 8. Dans le cèdre: an accurate detail. Cf. Euripides, Alc. 160.

L. 11. invoquant les étoiles. A reminiscence, happily adapted, of
Virgil, Aen. vi. 338: ‘Palinurus… who, while he steering viewed the
stars,… Fell headlong down.’–DRYDEN.

L. 13. étonnée. Étonner, whence E. astun, stun, astony,
astonish, astound, from L. extonare class. L. attonare, to
strike with a thunderbolt, originally ‘to strike senseless, powerless.’
It is here nearer this sense than weakened sense of ‘to surprise’.

L. 21. dans ce monument. We here find that we are reading a ‘funerary
epigram’ or epitaph.

L. 22. cap du Zéphyr. Cape Zephyrium at the southern end of Brutium.

L. 25. traînant un long deuil. Chénier thus renews, with advantage to
the meaning, the current phrase: ‘mener (=carry on) un deuil,’ to make
dole, mourn. This use of mener (cf. L. ducere in same sense) may be
paralleled in English by the archaic ‘lead great joy’ (Caxton, Sonnes
of Aymon, xx. 446), ‘lead sorrow,’ Partenay, 3785 (N.E.D., s. v.
lead, 11 and 12 b).