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.