77. 27. NÉMI; the lake is in the hollow of an extinct volcano, in the Alban mountains, a few miles southeast of Rome.
81. STANCES. From les Nouvelles Méditations. 18. MEMNON, son of Tithonus and Eos, king of the Ethiopians, slain by Achilles. The Greeks connected with Memnon various ancient monuments and buildings, especially the great temple at Thebes and one of the colossi of Amenophis III., currently called the statue of Memnon; legend reported of it that when touched by the first rays of the dawn it gave forth a musical sound.
83. LES RÉVOLUTIONS. From les Harmonies poétiques et religieuses. Only the last of the three divisions of the poem is given here.
84. 20. SIBYLLES ANTIQUES; concerning the sibyls, sibylline books, and sibylline leaves consult a classical dictionary. 23. VERBE; used currently for the second person of the Trinity; here it goes back to a passage in the first division of the poem, where speaking of God's process of creation; he says:
"Son Verbe court sur le néant!
Il court, et la Nature à ce Verbe qui vole
Le suit en chancelant de parole en parole,
Jamais, jamais demain ce qu'elle est aujourd'hui!
Et la création, toujours, toujours nouvelle,
Monte éternellement la symbolique échelle
Que Jacob rêva devant lui! "
85. 8. LES NOEUDS, knots of nautical reckoning.
ALFRED DE VIGNY.
1797-1863.
One of the great poets of the century. He surpassed most, if not all, of his fellow Romanticists in the intellectual quality of his verse. His lyrics are not merely the product of a moment of passion or of a passing emotion; the strings of his lyre were not set vibrating by every breeze that blew. The personal emotion from which the lyric springs was with him subjected to the action of an intellectual solvent, was generalized and made almost impersonal before it was given form and expression. For this reason partly the bulk of his poetry is small, not exceeding the limits of one small volume. But there are few poems that one would be content to lose. One should read, besides the two given here, Moïse, la Maison du Berger and la Mort du loup. De Vigny's influence on the poetry of the latter half of the century has been considerable.
Works: Poèmes, 1822; Poèmes antiques et modernes, 1826; les Destinées, 1864; in the Oeuvres complètes_, of which several editions have appeared, the Poésies make one volume.