Where we went in the boat was a long bay <br />a slingshot wide, walled in by towering stone-- <br />Peaked margin of antiquity's delay, <br />And we went there out of time's monotone: <br /> <br />Where we went in the black hull no light moved <br />But a gull white-winged along the feckless wave, <br />The breeze, unseen but fierce as a body loved, <br />That boat drove onward like a willing slave: <br /> <br />Where we went in the small ship the seaweed <br />Parted and gave to us the murmuring shore <br />And we made feast and in our secret need <br />Devoured the very plates Aeneas bore: <br /> <br />Where derelict you see through the low twilight <br />The green coast that you, thunder-tossed, would win, <br />Drop sail, and hastening to drink all night <br />Eat dish and bowl--to take that sweet land in! <br /> <br />Where we feasted and caroused on the sandless <br />Pebbles, affecting our day of piracy, <br />What prophecy of eaten plates could landless <br />Wanderers fulfil by the ancient sea? <br /> <br />We for that time might taste the famous age <br />Eternal here yet hidden from our eyes <br />When lust of power undid its stuffless rage; <br />They, in a wineskin, bore earth's paradise. <br /> <br />Let us lie down once more by the breathing side <br />Of Ocean, where our live forefathers sleep <br />As if the Known Sea still were a month wide-- <br />Atlantis howls but is no longer steep! <br /> <br />What country shall we conquer, what fair land <br />Unman our conquest and locate our blood? <br />We've cracked the hemispheres with careless hand! <br />Now, from the Gates of Hercules we flood <br /> <br />Westward, westward till the barbarous brine <br />Whelms us to the tired land where tasseling corn, <br />Fat beans, grapes sweeter than muscadine <br />Rot on the vine: in that land were we born.<br /><br />Allen Tate<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-mediterranean/
