The Mediterranean

Quem das finem, rex magne, dolorum?

Where we went in the boat was a long bayA slingshot wide, walled in by towering stone—Peaked margin of antiquity's delay,

And we went there out of time's monotone:

Where we went in the black hull no light

But a gull white-winged along the feckless wave,

The breeze, unseen but fierce as a body loved,

That boat drove onward like a willing slave:

Where we went in the small ship the

Parted and gave to us the murmuring shore,

And we made feast and in our secret

Devoured the very plates Aeneas bore:

Where derelict you see through the low

The green coast that you, thunder-tossed, would win,

Drop sail, and hastening to drink all

Eat dish and bowl to take that sweet land in!

Where we feasted and caroused on the

Pebbles, affecting our day of piracy,

What prophecy of eaten plates could

Wanderers fulfil by the ancient sea?

We for that time might taste the famous

Eternal here yet hidden from our

When lust of power undid its stuffless rage;

They, in a wineskin, bore earth's paradise.

Let us lie down once more by the breathing

Of Ocean, where our live forefathers

As if the Known Sea still were a month wide—Atlantis howls but is no longer steep!

What country shall we conquer, what fair

Unman our conquest and locate our blood ?

We've cracked the hemispheres with careless

Now, from the Gates of Hercules we

Westward, westward till the barbarous

Whelms us to the tired land where tasseling corn,

Fat beans, grapes sweeter than

Rot on the vine: in that land were we born.