Moselle

The Moselle (German: Mosel; Luxembourgish: Musel) is a river that rises in the Vosges mountains and flows through north-eastern France and Luxembourg to western Germany. It is a left bank tributary of the Rhine, which it joins at Koblenz. A small part of Belgium is in its basin as it includes the Sauer and the Our.

Quotes

• Salve amnis laudate agris, laudate colonis,
  Dignata imperio debent cui mœnia Belgæ!
  Amnis odorifero juga vitea consite Baccho,
  Consite gramineas, amnis viridissime, ripas: ...
  Salve, magna parens frugumque virûmque, Mosella.
  • Hail, river, welcome to the soil, and lauded by the farmer; to whom the Belgæ are indebted for their city's being thought worthy of empire. O river, with thy viny slopes planted with odoriferous wine. O river, whose grassy banks are of verdant green; hail, thou Moselle, great mother of corn and of men.
  • Ausonius, Mosella, præfatio, ll. 23–6, 381 (The city alluded to, is Trèves). Reported in Jules Michelet (tr. G. H. Smith) History of France, vol. 1 (New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1845), p. 169, note