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To throw me headlong in the rapid main:
Since nothing more than death my crime demands,
I die content, to die by human hands.’
He said, and on his knees my knees embrac’d:
I bade him boldly tell his fortune past,
His present state, his lineage, and his name,
Th’ occasion of his fears, and whence he came.
The good Anchises rais’d him with his hand;
Who, thus encourag’d, answer’d our demand:
‘From Ithaca, my native soil, I came
To Troy; and Achaemenides my name.
Me my poor father with Ulysses sent;
(O had I stay’d, with poverty content!)
But, fearful for themselves, my countrymen
Left me forsaken in the Cyclops’ den.
The cave, tho’ large, was dark; the dismal floor
Was pav’d with mangled limbs and putrid gore.
Our monstrous host, of more than human size,
Erects his head, and stares within the skies;
Bellowing his voice, and horrid is his hue.
Ye gods, remove this plague from mortal view!
The joints of slaughter’d wretches are his food;
And for his wine he quaffs the streaming blood.
These eyes beheld, when with his spacious hand
He seiz’d two captives of our Grecian band;
Stretch’d on his back, he dash’d against the stones
Their broken bodies, and their crackling bones:
With spouting blood the purple pavement swims,
While the dire glutton grinds the trembling limbs.
“‘Not unreveng’d Ulysses bore their fate,
Nor thoughtless of his own unhappy state;
For, gorg’d with flesh, and drunk with human wine
While fast asleep the giant lay supine,
Snoring aloud, and belching from his maw
His indigested foam, and morsels raw;
We pray; we cast the lots, and then surround
The monstrous body, stretch’d along the ground:
Each, as he could approach him, lends a hand
To bore his eyeball with a flaming brand.
Beneath his frowning forehead lay his eye;
For only one did the vast frame supply—
But that a globe so large, his front it fill’d,
Like the sun’s disk or like a Grecian shield.
The stroke succeeds; and down the pupil bends:
This vengeance follow’d for our slaughter’d friends.
But haste, unhappy wretches, haste to fly!
Your cables cut, and on your oars rely!
Such, and so vast as Polypheme appears,
A hundred more this hated island bears:
Like him, in caves they shut their woolly sheep;
Like him, their herds on tops of mountains keep;
Like him, with mighty strides, they stalk from steep to steep
And now three moons their sharpen’d horns renew,
Since thus, in woods and wilds, obscure from view,
I drag my loathsome days with mortal fright,
And in deserted caverns lodge by night;
Oft from the rocks a dreadful prospect see
Of the huge Cyclops, like a walking tree:
From far I hear his thund’ring voice resound,
And trampling feet that shake the solid ground.
Cornels and salvage berries of the wood,
And roots and herbs, have been my meager food.
While all around my longing eyes I cast,
I saw your happy ships appear at last.
On those I fix’d my hopes, to these I run;
’Tis all I ask, this cruel race to shun;
What other death you please, yourselves bestow.’
“Scarce had he said, when on the mountain’s brow
We saw the giant shepherd stalk before
His following flock, and leading to the shore:
A monstrous bulk, deform’d, depriv’d of sight;
His staff a trunk of pine, to guide his steps aright.
His pond’rous whistle from his neck descends;
His woolly care their pensive lord attends:
This only solace his hard fortune sends.
Soon as he reach’d the shore and touch’d the waves,
From his bor’d eye the gutt’ring blood he laves:
He gnash’d his teeth, and groan’d; thro’ seas he strides,
And scarce the topmost billows touch’d his sides.
“Seiz’d with a sudden fear, we run to sea,
The cables cut, and silent haste away;
The well-deserving stranger entertain;
Then, buckling to the work, our oars divide the main.
The giant harken’d to the dashing sound:
But, when our vessels out of reach he found,
He strided onward, and in vain essay’d
Th’ Ionian deep, and durst no farther wade.
With that he roar’d aloud: the dreadful cry
Shakes earth, and air, and seas; the billows fly
Before the bellowing noise to distant Italy.
The neigh’ring Aetna trembling all around,
The winding caverns echo to the sound.
His brother Cyclops hear the yelling roar,
And, rushing down the mountains, crowd the shore.
We saw their stern distorted looks, from far,
And one-eyed glance, that vainly threaten’d war:
A dreadful council, with their heads on high;
(The misty clouds about their foreheads fly;)
Not yielding to the tow’ring tree of Jove,
Or tallest cypress of Diana’s grove.
