“The giant then: ‘Our promis’d grace receive,

The hospitable boon we mean to give:

When all thy wretched crew have felt my power,

Noman shall be the last I will devour.’


“He said: then nodding with the fumes of wine

Droop’d his huge head, and snoring lay supine.

His neck obliquely o’er his shoulders hung,

Press’d with the weight of sleep that tames the strong:

There belch’d the mingled streams of wine and blood,

And human flesh, his indigested food.

Sudden I stir the embers, and inspire

With animating breath the seeds of fire:

Each drooping spirit with bold words repair,

And urged my train the dreadful deed to dare.

The stake now glow’d beneath the burning bed

(Green as it was) and sparkled fiery red,

Then forth the vengeful instrument I bring;

With beating hearts my fellows form a ring.

Urged my some present god, they swift let fall

The pointed torment on his visual ball.

Myself above them from a rising ground

Guide the sharp stake, and twirl it round and round.

As when a shipwright stands his workmen o’er,

Who ply the wimble, some huge beam to bore;

Urged on all hands, it nimbly spins about,

The grain deep-piercing till it scoops it out:

In his broad eye he whirls the fiery wood;

From the pierced pupil spouts the boiling blood;

Singed are his brows; the scorching lids grow black;

The jelly bubbles, and the fibres crack.

And as when armourers temper in the ford

The keen-edged pole-axe, or the shining sword,

The red-hot metal hisses in the lake,

Thus in his eye-ball hiss’d the plunging stake.

He sends a dreadful groan, the rocks around

Through all their inmost winding caves resound.

Scared we recoiled. Forth with frantic hand,

He tore and dash’d on earth and gory brand;

Then calls the Cyclops, all that round him dwell,

With voice like thunder, and a direful yell.

From all their dens the one-eyed race repair,

From rifted rocks, and mountains bleak in air.