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 found 670 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 stray. Then headlong fear fell on our folk in whatsoever way To shake the reefs out spreading sail to any wind that blew; But Helenus had bid us steer a midmost course and true 'Twixt Scylla and Charybdis, lest to death we sail o'er-close: So safest seemed for backward course to let the sails go loose. But lo, from out Pelorus' strait comes down the northern flaw, And past Pantagia's haven-mouth of living stone we draw, And through the gulf of Megara by Thapsus lying low. Such names did Achemenides, Ulysses' fellow, show, 690 As now he coasted back again the shore erst wandered by.