Aeneas At Washington

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