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.
