Line 3. _Usage._ A most powerful word in this slightly archaic sense:
the experience of long travel: familiar knowledge of things seen.
Line 12. _Loire._ This word has puzzled more than one editor. There are
two rivers: the great river Loire, which is feminine, and the little
Loir, which is masculine. Here Du Bellay spells the name of the great
river, but puts it in the masculine gender. It has been imagined that he
was talking of the smaller river. But he was not. The Loire alone has
any connection with Liré or with his life, and as for the gender,
strained as the interpretation may seem, I believe that Du Bellay
deliberately used it in the parallel with the Tiber and the idea of the
"Fleuve Paternel," to which he alludes so often elsewhere.
Line 13. _Lyré._ The modern Liré, his birthplace, on the left bank of
the Loire, just opposite Ancenis. As you go along the Poitiers road to
the bridge it stands up on your right, just before the river.