VI. LA JEUNE TARENTINE.

This touching elegy, Becq de Fouquières observes, was suggested to Chénier by the following funereal epigram of Xenocritus of Rhodes in the _Greek Anthology_: 'Thy locks are still dripping, unfortunate maid, O Lysidice, poor shipwrecked creature, dead in the salt flood. As the waves leapt wild, thou, dismayed by the violence of the sea, fellst out of the ship; and now on a tombstone are read thy name and that of Cyme, the place of thy birth, but thy remains have been washed to some chill shore; a bitter grief to thy father Aristomachus, who, accompanying thee to the house of thy husband, brought him neither a bride nor a corpse.'

L. 2. _Oiseaux chers à Thétis._ 'Dilectae Thetidi alcyones,' Virgil, _Georg._ i. 399.

L. 3. _Elle a vécu._ A euphemism, adopted from the Latin, for _elle est morte_, used in elevated style. Thus Corneille: 'Non, non; avant ce coup Sabine _aura vécu_.'--_Horace_, II. vi.

L. 4. _Camarine_, a town in Sicily.

L. 5. _l'hymen_, the hymeneal song.

L. 8. _Dans le cèdre_: an accurate detail. Cf. Euripides, _Alc._ 160.

L. 11. _invoquant les étoiles._ A reminiscence, happily adapted, of Virgil, _Aen._ vi. 338: 'Palinurus... who, while he steering viewed the stars,... Fell headlong down.'--DRYDEN.

L. 13. _étonnée._ _Étonner_, whence E. _astun_, _stun_, _astony_, _astonish_, _astound_, from L. _extonare_ class. L. _attonare_, to strike with a thunderbolt, originally 'to strike senseless, powerless.' It is here nearer this sense than weakened sense of 'to surprise'.

L. 21. _dans ce monument._ We here find that we are reading a 'funerary epigram' or epitaph.

L. 22. _cap du Zéphyr._ Cape Zephyrium at the southern end of Brutium.

L. 25. _traînant un long deuil._ Chénier thus renews, with advantage to the meaning, the current phrase: 'mener (=_carry on_) un deuil,' to make dole, mourn. This use of _mener_ (cf. L. _ducere_ in same sense) may be paralleled in English by the _archaic_ 'lead great joy' (Caxton, _Sonnes of Aymon_, xx. 446), 'lead sorrow,' _Partenay_, 3785 (_N.E.D._, s. v. lead, 11 and 12 b).