XXXV. INVOCATION A LA POÉSIE.
[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.
XXXVI. A LA SANTÉ.
[Ll. 1-3.] Compare these opening lines with the envoy or concluding part of Hylas, p. 28, l. 43.
[L. 9.] jeunesse prudente. In the sense of Latin prudens, 'wise.' Prudence is generally considered as an attribute of old age. 'La prudence est le fruit de la longue vie,' says the French (Sacy's) translation of the Bible, where the English Bible has: 'In length of days (is) understanding,' Job xii. 12.