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Home  »  Poems of Places An Anthology in 31 Volumes  »  A Modern Pilgrimage

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
France: Vols. IX–X. 1876–79.

La Quenille (La Queille)

A Modern Pilgrimage

By Arthur Hugh Clough (1819–1861)

(From My Tale)

I WAITED at La Quenille, ten miles or more

From the old Roman sources of Mont Dore;

Travellers to Tulle this way are forced to go,

An old high-road from Lyons to Bordeaux.

From Tulle to Brives the swift Corrèze descends,

At Brives you ’ve railway, and your trouble ends.

A little bourg La Quenille: and from the height

The mountains of Auvergne are all in sight,—

Green pastoral heights, that once in lava flowed,

Of primal fire the product and abode,—

And all the plateaus, and the lines that trace

Where in deep dells the waters find their place.

Far to the south, above the lofty plain,

The Plomb de Cantal lifts his towering train.