X. dryas. – André Chénier
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.’
L. 19. dieux humides, water-gods. Thus Boileau: ‘Il [le Rhin] voit
fuir à grands pas ses naïades craintives Qui toutes accourant vers leur
humide roi…’–Ep. iv. This invocation is taken from Propertius,
III. vii. 57.
L. 23. les ondes avares. The greedy waves.
Ll. 29. et ses efforts nombreux… The sentence has been left
unfinished.
L. 36. Virgil, Aen. iv. 304.
