words of fate he left me: ‘My son, whenever you are wafted
to an unknown coast, and hunger drives you, failing food,
to eat your tables, then remember my saying, there look
for a home of rest, set up your first roof-tree and strengthen 30
it with mound and rampart.’ This was the hunger he
meant. This was the last strait in store for us, not the
beginning but the end of death. Come then, take heart,
and with the morrow’s earliest light explore we what is
the place, who its dwellers, where the city of the nation, 35
making from the haven in different ways. Meanwhile