sound. The moon disappears and the waves are not raised up by the wind but die “without a
voice.”
In the next stanza, as the Queen Anacaona calls in the maidens of her court, innocenceand intimacy with nature are the primary characteristics of those in the entourage of Anacaona,
whose name itself meant “la fleur d’or.” Their metaphorical description as flowers conveys
their beauty and fragility:
Elle appelle ses compagnes
Les roses de ses campagnes
Les colombes de ses bois!
Elles viennent sur la mousse
Formant un cercle de sœurs ;
Chacune est naive et douce,
Et toutes, brillantes fleurs
Que perle une aurore humide
Regardent d’un œil timide
La Reine Anacaona ;
Soir voluptueux! les brises
Des senteurs les plus exquises
Parfument Xaragoa! (8-20)Xaragoa was one of the five Taino Indian kingdoms over which Caonabo and Anacaonaruled, its borders carving out a small section of territory located in the southwest of Hispaniola in
a region that now includes Port-au-Prince. In L’Union, it is Anacaona’s kingdom which is
described as having the people “les plus civilisés, les plus doux” of the island.^115 Although the
setting is still somewhat vague, these details shed a bit more light on place and especially time.
The poem contains no chronological markers, but generally speaking, Anacaona became “queen”
as she is referred to here, only after the murder of her husband Caonoabo. In this scene, she does
appear to rule alone, suggesting a time after Caonoabo’s death but prior to her own capture. In
spite of her own beliefs in peace with the Spanish and the hospitality she encouraged on the part
(^115) Le Républicain le 1 mars 1837.