A great oak stump now is lying
In the ashes yet undying.
Come, Maron, come!
620
Raging let him fix the doom,
Let him tear the eyelid up
Of the Cyclops—that his cup
May be evil!
Oh! I long to dance and revel
625
With sweet Bromian, long desired,
In loved ivy wreaths attired;
Leaving this abandoned home—
Will the moment ever come?
Ulysses. Be silent, ye wild things! Nay, hold your peace,
630
And keep your lips quite close; dare not to breathe,
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
635
Within—it is delightfully red hot.
Chorus. You then command who first should seize the stake
To burn the Cyclops’ eye, that all may share
In the great enterprise.
Semichorus I. We are too far;
We cannot at this distance from the door
Thrust fire into his eye.
640
Semichorus II. And we just now
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
645
Or ashes in our eyes, I know not whence.
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,
650
I know a famous Orphic incantation
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
655
Of my own comrades. Yet though weak of hand
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.
660
Hasten and thrust,
And parch up to dust,
The eye of the beast
Who feeds on his guest.
Burn and blind
665
The Aetnean hind!
Scoop and draw,
But beware lest he claw
Your limbs near his maw.
Cyclops. Ah me! my eyesight is parched up to cinders.
670
Chorus. What a sweet paean; sing me that again!
Cyclops. Ah me! indeed, what woe has fallen upon me!
But, wretched nothings, think ye not to flee
Out of this rock; I, standing at the outlet,
Will bar the way and catch you as you pass.
Chorus. What are you roaring out, Cyclops?
675
Cyclops. I perish!
Chorus. For you are wicked.
Cyclops. And besides miserable.
Chorus. What, did you fall into the fire when drunk?
Cyclops. ’Twas Nobody destroyed me.
Chorus. Why then no one
Can be to blame.
Cyclops. I say ’twas Nobody
Who blinded me.
680
Chorus. Why then you are not blind.
Cyclops. I wish you were as blind as I am.
Chorus. Nay,
It cannot be that no one made you blind.
Cyclops. You jeer me; where, I ask, is Nobody?
Chorus. Nowhere, O Cyclops.
685
Cyclops. It was that stranger ruined me:—the wretch
First gave me wine and then burned out my eye,
For wine is strong and hard to struggle with.
Have they escaped, or are they yet within?
Chorus. They stand under the darkness of the rock
And cling to it.
690
Cyclops. At my right hand or left?
Chorus. Close on your right.
Cyclops. Where?
Chorus. Near the rock itself.
You have them.
Cyclops. Oh, misfortune on misfortune!
I’ve cracked my skull.
Chorus. Now they escape you—there.
Cyclops. Not there, although you say so.
Chorus. Not on that side.
Cyclops. Where then?
695
Chorus. They creep about you on your left.
Cyclops. Ah! I am mocked! They jeer me in my ills.
Chorus. Not there! he is a little there beyond you.
Cyclops. Detested wretch! where are you?
Ulysses. Far from you
I keep with care this body of Ulysses.
700
Cyclops. What do you say? You proffer a new name.
Ulysses. My father named me so; and I have taken
A full revenge for your unnatural feast;
I should have done ill to have burned down Troy
And not revenged the murder of my comrades.
705
Cyclops. Ai! ai! the ancient oracle is accomplished;
It said that I should have my eye sight blinded
By your coming from Troy, yet it foretold
That you should pay the penalty for this
By wandering long over the homeless sea.
710
Ulysses. I bid thee weep—consider what I say;
I go towards the shore to drive my ship
To mine own land, o’er the Sicilian wave.
Cyclops. Not so, if whelming you with this huge stone,
I can crush you and all your men together;
715
I will descend upon the shore, though blind,
Groping my way adown the steep ravine.
Chorus. And we, the shipmates of Ulysses now,
Will serve our Bacchus all our happy lives.
EPIGRAMS
I.—TO STELLA
FROM THE GREEK OF PLATO
THOU wert the morning star among the living,
Ere thy fair light had fled;
Now, having died, thou art as Hesperus, giving
New splendour to the dead.
II.—KISSING HELENA
FROM THE GREEK OF PLATO
KISSING Helena, together
With my kiss, my soul beside it
Came to my lips, and there I kept it,—
For the poor thing had wandered thither,
5
To follow where the kiss should guide it,
Oh, cruel I, to intercept it!
III.—SPIRT OF PLATO
FROM THE GREEK
EAGLE! why soarest thou above that tomb?
To what sublime and starry-paven home
Floatest thou?—
I am the image of swift Plato’s spirit,
5
Ascending heaven; Athens doth inherit
His corpse below.
IV.—CIRCUMSTANCE
FROM THE GREEK
A MAN who was about to hang himself,
Finding a purse, then threw away his rope;
The owner, coming to reclaim his pelf,
The halter found, and used it. So is Hope
5
Changed for Despair—one laid upon the shelf,
We take the other. Under Heaven’s high cope
Fortune is God—all you endure and do
Depends on circumstance as much as you.
FRAGMENT OF THE ELEGY ON THE DEATH OF ADONIS<
br />
FROM THE GREEK OF BION
I MOURN Adonis dead—loveliest Adonis—
Dead, dead Adonis—and the Loves lament.
Sleep no more, Venus, wrapped in purple woof—
Wake violet-stolèd queen, and weave the crown
5
Of Death,—’tis Misery calls,—for he is dead.
The lovely one lies wounded in the mountains,
His white thigh struck with the white tooth; he scarce
Yet breathes; and Venus hangs in agony there.
The dark blood wanders o’er his snowy limbs,
10
His eyes beneath their lids are lustreless,
The rose has fled from his wan lips, and there
That kiss is dead, which Venus gathers yet.
A deep, deep wound Adonis …
A deeper Venus bears upon her heart.
15
See, his belovèd dogs are gathering round—
The Oread nymphs are weeping—Aphrodite
With hair unbound is wandering through the woods,
’Wildered, ungirt, unsandalled—the thorns pierce
Her hastening feet and drink her sacred blood.
20
Bitterly screaming out, she is driven on
Through the long vales; and her Assyrian boy,
Her love, her husband, calls—the purple blood
From his struck thigh stains her white navel now,
Her bosom, and her neck before like snow.
25
Alas for Cytherea—the Loves mourn—
The lovely, the beloved is gone!—and now
Her sacred beauty vanishes away.
For Venus whilst Adonis lived was fair—
Alas! her loveliness is dead with him.
30
The oaks and mountains cry, Ai! ai! Adonis!
The springs their waters change to tears and weep—
The flowers are withered up with grief …
Ai! ai! Adonis is dead
Echo resounds Adonis dead.
35
Who will weep not thy dreadful woe, O Venus?
Soon as she saw and knew the mortal wound
Of her Adonis—saw the life-blood flow
From his fair thigh, now wasting,—wailing loud
She clasped him, and cried ‘Stay, Adonis!
Stay, dearest one, …
40
and mix my lips with thine—
Wake yet a while, Adonis—oh, but once,
That I may kiss thee now for the last time—
But for as long as one short kiss may live—
45
Oh, let thy breath flow from thy dying soul
Even to my mouth and heart, that I may suck
That …’
FRAGMENT OF THE ELEGY ON THE DEATH OF BION
FROM THE GREEK OF MOSCHUS
YE Dorian woods and waves, lament aloud,—
Augment your tide, O streams, with fruitless tears,
For the belovèd Bion is no more.
Let every tender herb and plant and flower,
From each dejected bud and drooping bloom,
Shed dews of liquid sorrow, and with breath
Of melancholy sweetness on the wind
Diffuse its languid love; let roses blush,
Anemones grow paler for the loss
10
Their dells have known; and thou, O hyacinth,
Utter thy legend now—yet more, dumb flower,
Than ‘Ah! alas!’—thine is no common grief—
Bion the [sweetest singer] is no more.
FROM THE GREEK OF MOSCHUS
WHEN winds that move not its calm surface sweep
The azure sea, I love the land no more;
The smiles of the serene and tranquil deep
Tempt my unquiet mind.—But when the roar
5
Of Ocean’s gray abyss resounds, and foam
Gathers upon the sea, and vast waves burst,
I turn from the drear aspect to the home
Of Earth and its deep woods, where, interspersed,
When winds blow loud, pines make sweet melody.
10
Whose house is some lone bark, whose toil the sea,
Whose prey the wandering fish, an evil lot
Has chosen.—But I my languid limbs will fling
Beneath the plane, where the brook’s murmuring
Moves the calm spirit, but disturbs it not.
PAN, ECHO, AND THE SATYR
FROM THE GREEK OF MOSCHUS
PAN loved his neighbour Echo—but that child
Of Earth and Air pined for the Satyr leaping;
The Satyr loved with wasting madness wild
The bright nymph Lyda,—and so three went weeping.
5
As Pan loved Echo, Echo loved the Satyr,
The Satyr, Lyda; and so love consumed them.—
And thus to each—which was a woful matter—
To bear what they inflicted Justice doomed them;
For, inasmuch as each might hate the lover,
10
Each, loving, so was hated.—Ye that love not
Be warned—in thought turn this example over,
That when ye love, the like return ye prove not.
FROM VERGIL’S TENTH ECLOGUE
[VV. 1–26]
MELODIOUS Arethusa, o’er my verse
Shed thou once more the spirit of thy stream:
Who denies verse to Gallus? So, when thou
Glidest beneath the green and purple gleam
5
Of Syracusan waters, mayst thou flow
Unmingled with the bitter Doric dew!
Begin, and, whilst the goats are browsing now
The soft leaves, in our way let us pursue
The melancholy loves of Gallus. List!
10
We sing not to the dead: the wild woods knew
His sufferings, and their echoes …
Young Naiads, … in what far woodlands wild
Wandered ye when unworthy love possessed
Your Gallus? Not where Pindus is up-piled,
15
Nor where Parnassus’ sacred mount, nor where
Aonian Aganippe expands …
The laurels and the myrtle-copses dim.
The pine-encircled mountain, Maenalus,
The cold crags of Lycaeus, weep for him;
20
And Sylvan, crowned with rustic coronals,
Came shaking in his speed the budding wands
And heavy lilies which he bore: we knew
Pan the Arcadian.
· · · · · · ·
‘What madness is this, Gallus? Thy heart’s care
25
With willing steps pursues another there.’
FROM VERGIL’S FOURTH GEORGIC
[VV. 360 et seq.]
AND the cloven waters like a chasm of mountains
Stood, and received him in its mighty portal
And let him through the deep’s untrampled fountains
He went in wonder through the path immortal
5
Of his great Mother and her humid reign
And groves profaned not by the step of mortal
Which sounded as he passed, and lakes which rain
Replenished not girt round by marble caves
’Wildered by the watery motion of the main
10
Half ’wildered he beheld the bursting waves
Of every stream beneath the mighty earth
Phasis and Lycus which the sand paves,
[And] the chasm where old Enipeus has its birth
And father Tyber and Anienas[?] glow
15
And whence Caicus, Mysian stream, comes forth
And rock-resounding Hypanis, and thou
Eridanus who bearest like empire’s sign
Two golden horns upon thy taurine brow
Thou than whom none of the st
reams divine
20
Through garden-fields and meads with fiercer power,
Burst in their tumult on the purple brine.
SONNET
FROM THE ITALIAN OF DANTE
Dante Alighieri to Guido Cavalcanti
GUIDO, I would that Lapo, thou, and I,
Led by some strong enchantment, might ascend
A magic ship, whose charmèd sails should fly
With winds at will where’er our thoughts might wend,
5
So that no change, nor any evil chance
Should mar our joyous voyage; but it might be,
That even satiety should still enhance
Between our hearts their strict community:
And that the bounteous wizard then would place
10
Vanna and Bice and my gentle love,
Companions of our wandering, and would grace
With passionate talk, wherever we might rove,
Our time, and each were as content and free
As I believe that thou and I should be.
THE FIRST CANZONE OF THE CONVITO
FROM THE ITALIAN OF DANTE
I
YE who intelligent the Third Heaven move,
Hear the discourse which is within my heart,
Which cannot be declared, it seems so new.
The Heaven whose course follows your power and art,
5
Oh, gentle creatures that ye are! me drew,
And therefore may I dare to speak to you,
Even of the life which now I live—and yet
I pray that ye will hear me when I cry,
And tell of mine own heart this novelty;
10
How the lamenting Spirit moans in it,
The Complete Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley: (A Modern Library E-Book) Page 109
