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.