IX. PANNYCHIS.

This idyll is imitated from Gessner's _Clymene and Damon_ (or _Daphne and Micon_ in some editions): 'Tell me, love, what wilt thou do with this little altar?... Dost thou not remember that in the days of our childhood it was our favourite resort? Then were we no taller than this young columbine. About the altar will I plant myrtle and rose bushes. If Pan protect them, their branches will soon overarch the altar and form a small temple of verdure.... Dost thou see these bushes? they still grow in the shape of an arbour, though untrimmed now; they were our bower. We built the vault as high as we could reach.... Had I not planted a little garden before the bower? Had we not hedged it in with rush? A sheep might have browsed off the hedge in a moment, it was so large.... Thou wast lucky to find a small mutilated image of Cupid. As a fond mother, thou wouldst lavish care and caresses on him; a nutshell was his cradle, where, lulled by thy songs, he would lie on rose leaves.' A cicada is also mentioned, which gets hurt in flying away. Then Damon: 'Thus passed the days of our childhood, when in our games thou wast my wife and I was thy husband.'

L. 5. As in Ovid, _Met._ xiii. 841, the giant Polyphemus compares himself to Jupiter, so here the child compares himself to his young goat.

Ll. 19-24. A translation of the fourteenth epigram of Anytus, p. 200, vol. i. [of the _Anthology_]. See also the twenty-ninth of Argentarius, vol. ii, p. 273. (_Note of A. Chénier._) Anytus of Tegea lived 300 years before the Christian era.

L. 20. _verte cigale._ The cicada is brown. Chénier is here thinking of the large green grasshopper (_Locusta viridissima_).

L. 21. _les honneurs._ The honours of this tomb, that is, this tomb and its adjuncts destined to honour thy memory.