[L. 14.] les hauts Pyrénées, generally feminine, e.g. 'Pyrénées Orientales.' But Chénier thinks of them as 'les Monts Pyrénées.'
[L. 18.] Respire, breathes (forth).
[L. 19.] couvrant, goes with la Provence.
[L. 36.] Incertaine. Because it shifts its channel.
[L. 44.] Que visite Phoebus le soir ou le matin. A poetic translation of Orient and Occident.
[L. 47.] l'une et l'autre Téthys. Catullus, 'Uterque Neptunus,' xxxi. 3. Cf. notes to Nérée, p. 90, l. 95, and Cybèle, p. 91, l. 133.
[L. 50.] Trudaine. The grandfather of Chénier's friend, who was Director of Public Works under Louis XV, and laid out the fine roads of France.
[L. 54.] impie. Not, of course, irreligious, but sacrilegious, as invading the (to a Frenchman) sacred territory of France—in the course of what Charles Lamb ironically calls 'the long, steady, deep-rooted, rational antipathies of the great French and English nations.'—Mrs. Battle's Opinions on Whist. See another use of impie, p. 112, l. 107.
[L. 83.] Le sel. An allusion to the gabelle or salt-tax imposed before the Revolution. This was written before 1789.
[L. 85.] Mille brigands, the partisans or men who constituted partis or societies for the levy of certain taxes.