SILENUS: By Jupiter! you said that I am fair.
CYCLOPS: Pour out, and only give me the cup full. _565
SILENUS: How is it mixed? let me observe.
CYCLOPS: Curse you!
Give it me so.
SILENUS: Not till I see you wear That coronal, and taste the cup to you.
CYCLOPS: Thou wily traitor!
SILENUS: But the wine is sweet.
Ay, you will roar if you are caught in drinking. _570
CYCLOPS: See now, my lip is clean and all my beard.
SILENUS: Now put your elbow right and drink again.
As you see me drink--...
CYCLOPS: How now?
SILENUS: Ye G.o.ds, what a delicious gulp!
CYCLOPS: Guest, take it;--you pour out the wine for me. _575
ULYSSES: The wine is well accustomed to my hand.
CYCLOPS: Pour out the wine!
ULYSSES: I pour; only be silent.
CYCLOPS: Silence is a hard task to him who drinks.
ULYSSES: Take it and drink it off; leave not a dreg.
Oh that the drinker died with his own draught! _580
CYCLOPS: Papai! the vine must be a sapient plant.
ULYSSES: If you drink much after a mighty feast, Moistening your thirsty maw, you will sleep well; If you leave aught, Bacchus will dry you up.
CYCLOPS: Ho! ho! I can scarce rise. What pure delight! _585 The heavens and earth appear to whirl about Confusedly. I see the throne of Jove And the clear congregation of the G.o.ds.
Now if the Graces tempted me to kiss I would not--for the loveliest of them all _590 I would not leave this Ganymede.
SILENUS: Polypheme, I am the Ganymede of Jupiter.
CYCLOPS: By Jove, you are; I bore you off from Darda.n.u.s.
[ULYSSES AND THE CHORUS.]
ULYSSES: Come, boys of Bacchus, children of high race, This man within is folded up in sleep, _595 And soon will vomit flesh from his fell maw; The brand under the shed thrusts out its smoke, No preparation needs, but to burn out The monster"s eye;--but bear yourselves like men.
CHORUS: We will have courage like the adamant rock, _600 All things are ready for you here; go in, Before our father shall perceive the noise.
ULYSSES: Vulcan, Aetnean king! burn out with fire The shining eye of this thy neighbouring monster!
And thou, O Sleep, nursling of gloomy Night, _605 Descend unmixed on this G.o.d-hated beast, And suffer not Ulysses and his comrades, Returning from their famous Trojan toils, To perish by this man, who cares not either For G.o.d or mortal; or I needs must think _610 That Chance is a supreme divinity, And things divine are subject to her power.
NOTE: _606 G.o.d-hated 1824; G.o.d-hating (as an alternative) B.
CHORUS: Soon a crab the throat will seize Of him who feeds upon his guest, Fire will burn his lamp-like eyes _615 In revenge of such a feast!
A great oak stump now is lying In the ashes yet undying.
Come, Maron, come!
Raging let him fix the doom, _620 Let him tear the eyelid up Of the Cyclops--that his cup May be evil!
Oh! I long to dance and revel With sweet Bromian, long desired, _625 In loved ivy wreaths attired; Leaving this abandoned home-- Will the moment ever come?
ULYSSES: Be silent, ye wild things! Nay, hold your peace, And keep your lips quite close; dare not to breathe, _630 Or spit, or e"en wink, lest ye wake the monster, Until his eye be tortured out with fire.
CHORUS: Nay, we are silent, and we chaw the air.
ULYSSES: Come now, and lend a hand to the great stake Within--it is delightfully red hot. _635
CHORUS: You then command who first should seize the stake To burn the Cyclops" eye, that all may share In the great enterprise.
SEMICHORUS 1: We are too far; We cannot at this distance from the door Thrust fire into his eye.
SEMICHORUS 2: And we just now _640 Have become lame! cannot move hand or foot.
CHORUS: The same thing has occurred to us,--our ankles Are sprained with standing here, I know not how.
ULYSSES: What, sprained with standing still?
CHORUS: And there is dust Or ashes in our eyes, I know not whence. _645
ULYSSES: Cowardly dogs! ye will not aid me then?
CHORUS: With pitying my own back and my back-bone, And with not wishing all my teeth knocked out, This cowardice comes of itself--but stay, I know a famous Orphic incantation _650 To make the brand stick of its own accord Into the skull of this one-eyed son of Earth.
ULYSSES: Of old I knew ye thus by nature; now I know ye better.--I will use the aid Of my own comrades. Yet though weak of hand _655 Speak cheerfully, that so ye may awaken The courage of my friends with your blithe words.
CHORUS: This I will do with peril of my life, And blind you with my exhortations, Cyclops.
Hasten and thrust, _660 And parch up to dust, The eye of the beast Who feeds on his guest.
Burn and blind The Aetnean hind! _665 Scoop and draw, But beware lest he claw Your limbs near his maw.
CYCLOPS: Ah me! my eyesight is parched up to cinders.
CHORUS: What a sweet paean! sing me that again! _670