For such demerits if my death be due, No more for this abandoned life I sue: This only favour let my tears obtain, 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 embraced: I bade him boldly tell his fortune past, His present state, his lineage, and his name, The occasion of his fears, and whence he came. The good Anchises raised him with his hand; Who thus, encouraged, answered our demand:-- "From Ithaca, my native soil, I came To Troy; and Achæmenides my name. Me my poor father with Ulysses sent; (O! had I stayed, with poverty content!) But, fearful for themselves, my countrymen Left me forsaken in the Cyclops' den. The cave, though large, was dark; the dismal floor Was paved 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 slaughtered wretches are his food; And for his wine he quaffs the streaming blood. These eyes beheld, when with his spacious hand He seized two captives of our Grecian band; Stretched on his back, he dashed 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 unrevenged Ulysses bore their fate, Nor thoughtless of his own unhappy state; For, gorged with flesh, and drunk with human wine, While fast asleep the giant lay supine, Snoaring aloud, and belching from his maw His indigested foam, and morsels raw-- We pray; we cast the lots, and then surround The monstrous body, stretched along the ground: Each, as he could approach him, lends a hand To bore his eye-ball 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 filled, Like the sun's disk, or like a Grecian shield. The stroke succeeds; and down the pupil bends; This vengeance followed for our slaughtered 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 sharpened 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 thundering voice resound, And trampling feet that shake the solid ground.