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Poem: "Claude Crozet"


He engineered a course through Russian snow
And staked a road beyond the torpid Nile,
Around the Alps and to the river Po,
Mapped out an army's passage mile by mile.
His emperor who conquered half the earth
Holds last dominion under English sand -
And Claude Crozet, who found an exile's berth,
Surveys a turnpike through the Gauley land.
He take his compass from a leather sack,
Sets up a tripod, lets his line fall plumb,
And shadowing the short-cut bison track
Lays out a broader road for days to come.
Now troops may march by Gauley shore
And booted captains ride,
And great wheels roll the freight of war
Up Gauley's flint-ribbed side.


Source: Louise McNeill, Gauley Mountain (1939).