What shall we do? the Cyclops is at hand!
Old man, we perish! whither can we fly?
Hide yourselves quick within that hollow rock.
'Twere perilous to fly into the net.
The cavern has recesses numberless;
Hide yourselves quick.
The mighty Troy would be indeed disgraced
If I should fly one man. How many times
Have I withstood with shield immoveable,
Ten thousand Phrygians!—If I needs must die,
Yet will I die with glory ;-if I live,
The praise which I have gained will yet remain.
What, ho! assistance, comrades, haste, assistance !
The CYCLOPS, SILENUS, ULYSSES; CHORUS.
What is this tumult? Bacchus is not here,
Nor tympanies nor brazen castanets.
How are my young lambs in the cavern? Milking
Their dams, or playing by their sides? And is
The new cheese pressed into the bull-rush baskets?
Speak! I'll beat some of you till you rain tears-
Look up, not downwards, when I speak to you.
See! I now gape at Jupiter himself,
I stare upon Orion and the stars.
Well, is the dinner fitly cooked and laid?
All ready, if your throat is ready too.
Are the bowls full of milk besides ?
So you may drink a tunful if you will.
Is it ewe's milk, or cow's milk, or both mixed ?—
Both, either; only pray don't swallow me.
What is this crowd I see beside the stalls?
Outlaws or thieves? for near my cavern home
I see my young lambs coupled two by two
With willow bands; mixed with my cheeses lie
Their implements; and this old fellow here
Has his bald head broken with stripes.
I have been beaten till I burn with fever.
By whom? Who laid his fist upon your head?
Those men, because I would not suffer them
Did not the rascals know
I am a God, sprung from the race of heaven?
I told them so, but they bore off your things,
And ate the cheese in spite of all I said,
And carried out the lambs-and said, moreover,
They'd pin you down with a three-cubit collar,
And pull your vitals out through your one eye,
Torture your back with stripes; then, binding you,
Throw you as ballast into the ship's hold,
And then deliver you, a slave, to move
Enormous rocks, or found a vestibule.
In truth? Nay, haste, and place in order quickly
The cooking knives, and heap upon the hearth,
And kindle it, a great faggot of wood.-
As soon as they are slaughtered, they shall fill
My belly, broiling warm from the live coals,
Or boiled and seethed within the bubbling cauldron.
I am quite sick of the wild mountain game;
Of stags and lions I have gorged enough,
And I grow hungry for the flesh of men.
Nay, master, something new is very pleasant
After one thing for ever, and of late
Very few strangers have approached our cave.
Hear, Cyclops, a plain tale on the other side.
We, wanting to buy food, came from our ship
Into the neighbourhood of your cave, and here
This old Silenus gave us in exchange
These lambs for wine, the which he took and drank,
And all by mutual compact, without force.
There is no word of truth in what he says,
For slily he was selling all your store.
I? May you perish, wretch—
Cyclops, I swear by Neptune who begot thee,
By mighty Triton and by Nereus old,
Calypso and the glaucous ocean Nymphs,
The sacred waves and all the race of fishes-
Be these the witnesses, my dear sweet master,
My darling little Cyclops, that I never
Gave any of your stores to these false strangers.—
If I speak false may those whom most I love,
My children, perish wretchedly!
I saw him giving these things to the strangers.
If I speak false, then may my father perish,
But do not thou wrong hospitality.
You lie! I swear that he is juster far
Than Rhadamanthus-I trust more in him.
But let me ask, whence have ye sailed, O strangers?
Who are you? and what city nourished ye?
Our race is Ithacan.-Having destroyed
The town of Troy, the tempests of the sea
Have driven us on thy land, O Polypheme.
What, have ye shared in the unenvied spoil
Of the false Helen, near Scamander's stream?
The same, having endured a woeful toil.
O basest expedition! Sailed ye not
From Greece to Phrygia for one woman's sake?
"Twas the Gods' work-no mortal was in fault.
But, O great offspring of the Ocean King!
We pray thee and admonish thee with freedom,
That thou dost spare thy friends who visit thee,
And place no impious food within thy jaws.
For in the depths of Greece we have upreared
Temples to thy great father, which are all
His homes. The sacred bay of Tænarus
Remains inviolate, and each dim recess
Scooped high on the Malean promontory,
And aery Sunium's silver-veined crag,
Which divine Pallas keeps unprofaned ever,
The Gerastian asylums, and whate'er
Within wide Greece our enterprise has kept
From Phrygian contumely; and in which
You have a common care, for you inhabit
The skirts of Grecian land, under the roots
Of Ætna and its crags, spotted with fire.
Turn then to converse under human laws;
Receive us shipwrecked suppliants, and provide
Food, clothes, and fire, and hospitable gifts;
Nor, fixing upon oxen-piercing spits
Our limbs, so fill your belly and your jaws.
Priam's wide land has widowed Greece enough;
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