And humbled groan beneath the hand of Jove.

His ample maw with human carnage fill’d,

A milky deluge next the giant swill’d;

Then stretch’d in length o’er half the cavern’d rock,

Lay senseless, and supine, amidst the flock.

To seize the time, and with a sudden wound

To fix the slumbering monster to the ground,

My soul impels me! and in act I stand

To draw the sword; but wisdom held my hand.

A deed so rash had finished all our fate,

No mortal forces from the lofty gate

Could roll the rock. In hopeless grief we lay,

And sigh, expecting the return of day.

Now did the rosy-fingered morn arise,

And shed her sacred light along the skies;

He wakes, he lights the fire, he milks the dams,

And to the mother’s teats submits the lambs.

The task thus finish’d of his morning hours,

Two more he snatches, murders, and devours.

Then pleased, and whistling, drives his flock before,

Removes the rocky mountain from the door,

And shuts again: with equal ease disposed,

As a light quiver’s lid is oped and closed.

His giant voice the echoing region fills:

His flocks, obedient, spread o’er all the hills.


“Thus left behind, even in the last despair

I thought, devised, and Pallas heard my prayer.

Revenge, and doubt, and caution, work’d my breast;

But this of many counsels seem’d the best:

The monster’s club within the cave I spied,

A tree of stateliest growth, and yet undried,

Green from the wood: of height and bulk so vast,

The largest ship might claim it for a mast.

This shorten’d of its top, I gave my train

A fathom’s length, to shape it and to plane;

The narrower end I sharpen’d to a spire,

Whose point we harden’d with the force of fire,

And hid it in the dust that strew’d the cave,

Then to my few companions, bold and brave,

Proposed, who first the venturous deed should try,

In the broad orbit of his monstrous eye

To plunge the brand and twirl the pointed wood,

When slumber next should tame the man of blood.