I myself saw furious with blood <br />Neoptolemus, at his side the black Atridae, <br />Hecuba and the hundred daughters, Priam <br />Cut down, his filth drenching the holy fires. <br />In that extremity I bore me well, <br />A true gentleman, valorous in arms, <br />Distinterested and honourable. Then fled <br />That was a time when civilization <br />Run by the few fell to the many, and <br />Crashed to the shout of men, the clang of arms: <br />Cold victualing I seized, I hoisted up <br />The old man my father upon my back, <br />In the smoke made by sea for a new world <br />Saving little—a mind imperishable <br />If time is, a love of past things tenuous <br />As the hesitation of receding love. <br /> <br />(To the reduction of uncitied littorals <br />We brought chiefly the vigor of prophecy, <br />Our hunger breeding calculation <br />And fixed triumphs) <br /> <br />I saw the thirsty dove <br />IN the glowing fields of Troy, hemp ripening <br />And tawny corn, the thickening Blue Grass <br />All lying rich forever in the green sun. <br />I see all things apart, the towers that men <br />Contrive I too contrived long, long ago. <br />Now I demand little. The singular passion <br />Abides its object and consumes desire <br />In the circling shadow of its appetite. <br />There was a time when the young eyes were slow, <br />Their flame steady beyond the firstling fire, <br /> <br />I stood in the rain, far from home at nightfall <br />By the Potomac, the great Dome lit the water, <br />The city my blood had built I knew no more <br />While the screech-owl whistled his new delight <br />Consecutively dark. <br /> <br />Stuck in the wet mire <br />Four thousand leagues from the ninth buried city <br />I thought of Troy, what we had built her for.<br /><br />Allen Tate<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/aeneas-at-washington/
