The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Part 161

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 s.h.i.+ning 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 wis.h.i.+ng 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