Allen Tate's "The Mediterranean"

Today, we’re taking a look at Allen Tate’s Aeneid-inspired “Mediterranean.” Although the poem explores similiar ground to Tennyson’s “Ulysses,” its approach is nostalgic and ironic. Where are the great heroes and great adventures of old? Are they still possible today? 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 movedBut 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 seaweedParted and gave to us the murmuring shoreAnd we made feast and in our secret needDevoured the very plates Aeneas bore:Where derelict you see through the low twilightThe green coast that you, thunder-tossed, would win,Drop sail, and hastening to drink all nightEat dish and bowl--to take that sweet land in!Where we feasted and caroused on the sandlessPebbles, affecting our day of piracy,What prophecy of eaten plates could landlessWanderers fulfil by the ancient sea?We for that time might taste the famous ageEternal here yet hidden from our eyesWhen lust of power undid its stuffless rage;They, in a wineskin, bore earth's paradise.Let us lie down once more by the breathing sideOf Ocean, where our live forefathers sleepAs if the Known Sea still were a month wide--Atlantis howls but is no longer steep!What country shall we conquer, what fair landUnman our conquest and locate our blood?We've cracked the hemispheres with careless hand!Now, from the Gates of Hercules we floodWestward, westward till the barbarous brineWhelms us to the tired land where tasseling corn,Fat beans, grapes sweeter than muscadineRot on the vine: in that land were we born. Get full access to Talk Write at brandoncookwriter.substack.com/subscribe