Xxxv. invocation a la poésie. – André Chénier

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.