Think of those fields of light that sometimes sheet
Low-tide sands, and of the panes of such a tide
When, carrying the sky, they start to flow
Everywhere, and then across themselves.
    Likewise the Greek bronze streaming out at speed,
Glinting among the orchards and the groves,
And then across the plain – dust, grass, no grass,
Its long low swells and falls – all warwear pearl,
Blue Heaven above, Mount Ida’s snow behind, Troy in between.
    And what pleasure it was to be there! To be one of that host!
Greek, and as naked as God! naked as bride and groom!
Exulting for battle! lords shouting the beat out:
    ‘One–’
Keen for a kill:
    ‘Two – three’
As our glittering width and our masks that glittered
Came up the last low rise of the plain, onto the ridge, and

    ‘Now’

(As your heart skips a beat)

    ‘See the Wall’

    And you do

    It is immense

    So high

    So still

    It fills your sight.

    And not a soul to be seen, or a sound to be heard,
Except, as on our thousands silence fell,
The splash of Laomedon’s sacred springs,
One hot, one cold, whose fountains rise or die
Within a still day’s earshot of the Wall,
And in between whose ponds the Skean road
Runs downslope from the ridge, beneath the zigzags of God’s oak,
Across the strip and up, until, under the Skean Gate,
It enters Troy, majestic on its eminence.