With starry zenith; mirky cloud hung over all the night,
In mist of dead untimely tide the moon was hidden close.
But when from earliest Eastern dawn the following day arose,
And fair Aurora from the heaven the watery shades had cleared,
Lo, suddenly from out the wood new shape of man appeared.590
Unknown he was, most utter lean, in wretchedest of plight:
Shoreward he stretched his suppliant hands; we turn back at the sight,
And gaze on him: all squalor there, a mat of beard we see,
And raiment clasped with wooden thorns; and yet a Greek is he,
Yea, sent erewhile to leaguered Troy in Greekish weed of war.
But when he saw our Dardan guise and arms of Troy afar,
Feared at the sight he hung aback at first a little space,
But presently ran headlong down into our sea-side place
With tears and prayers:
'O Teucrian men, by all the stars,' he cried,
'By all the Gods, by light of heaven ye breathe, O bear me wide600
Away from here! to whatso land henceforth ye lead my feet
It is enough. That I am one from out the Danaan fleet,
And that I warred on Ilian house erewhile, most true it is;
For which, if I must pay so much wherein I wrought amiss,
Then strew me on the flood and sink my body in the sea!
To die by hands of very men shall be a joy to me.'
He spake with arms about our knees, and wallowing still he clung
Unto our knees: but what he was and from what blood he sprung
We bade him say, and tell withal what fate upon him drave.
His right hand with no tarrying then Father Anchises gave610
Unto the youth, and heartened him with utter pledge of peace.
So now he spake when fear of us amid his heart did cease:
'Luckless Ulysses' man am I, and Ithaca me bore,
Hight Achemenides, who left that Adamastus poor
My father (would I still were there!) by leaguered Troy to be.
Here while my mates aquake with dread the cruel threshold flee,
They leave me in the Cyclops' den unmindful of their friend;
A house of blood and bloody meat, most huge from end to end,
Mirky within: high up aloft star-smiting to behold
Is he himself;—such bane, O God, keep thou from field and fold!620
Scarce may a man look on his face; no word to him is good;
On wretches' entrails doth he feed and black abundant blood.
Myself I saw him of our folk two hapless bodies take
In his huge hand, whom straight he fell athwart a stone to break
As there he lay upon his back; I saw the threshold swim
With spouted blood, I saw him grind each bloody dripping limb,
I saw the joints amidst his teeth all warm and quivering still.
—He payed therefore, for never might Ulysses bear such ill,
Nor was he worser than himself in such a pinch bestead:
For when with victual satiate, deep sunk in wine, his head630
Fell on his breast, and there he lay enormous through the den,
Snorting out gore amidst his sleep, with gobbets of the men
And mingled blood and wine; then we sought the great Gods with prayer
And drew the lots, and one and all crowded about him there,
And bored out with a sharpened pike the eye that used to lurk
Enormous lonely 'neath his brow overhanging grim and mirk,
As great a shield of Argolis, or Phœbus' lamp on high;
And so our murdered fellows' ghosts avenged we joyously.
—But ye, O miserable men, flee forth! make haste to pluck
The warping hawser from the shore!640
For even such, and e'en so great as Polypheme in cave
Shuts in the wealth of woolly things and draws the udders' wave,
An hundred others commonly dwell o'er these curving bights,
Unutterable Cyclop folk, or stray about the heights.
Thrice have the twin horns of the moon fulfilled the circle clear
While I have dragged out life in woods and houses of the deer,
And gardens of the beasts; and oft from rocky place on high
Trembling I note the Cyclops huge, hear foot and voice go by.
And evil meat of wood-berries, and cornel's flinty fruit649
The bush-boughs give; on grass at whiles I browse, and plucked-up root
So wandering all about, at last I see unto the shore
Your ships a-coming: thitherward my steps in haste I bore:
Whate'er might hap enough it was to flee this folk of ill;
Rather do ye in any wise the life within me spill.'
And scarcely had he said the word ere on the hill above
The very shepherd Polypheme his mountain mass did move,
A marvel dread, a shapeless trunk, an eyeless monstrous thing,
Who down unto the shore well known his sheep was shepherding;
A pine-tree in the hand of him leads on and stays his feet;
The woolly sheep his fellows are, his only pleasure sweet,660
The only solace of his ill.
But when he touched the waters deep, and mid the waves was come,
He falls to wash the flowing blood from off his eye dug out;
Gnashing his teeth and groaning sore he walks the sea about,
But none the less no wave there was up to his flank might win.
Afeard from far we haste to flee, and, having taken in
Our suppliant, who had earned it well, cut cable silently,
And bending to the eager oars sweep out along the sea.
He heard it, and his feet he set to follow on the sound;
But when his right hand failed to reach, and therewithal he found670
He might not speed as fast as fares the Ionian billow lithe,
Then clamour measureless he raised, and ocean quaked therewith
Through every wave, and inwardly the land was terrified
Of Italy, and Ætna boomed from many-hollowed side.
But all the race of Cyclops stirred from woods and lofty hills,
Down rushes to the haven-side and all the haven fills;
And Ætna's gathered brethren there we see; in vain they stand
Glowering grim-eyed with heads high up in heaven, a dreadful band
Of councillors: they were as when on ridge aloft one sees
The oaks stand thick against the sky, and cone-hung cypresses,680
Jove's lofty woods, or thicket where Diana's footsteps