Just as I wished, the lots were cast on four:

Myself the fifth. We stand and wait the hour.

He comes with evening: all his fleecy flock

Before him march, and pour into the rock:

Not one, or male or female, stayed behind

(So fortune chanced, or so some god designed);

Then heaving high the stone’s unwieldy weight,

He roll’d it on the cave and closed the gate.

First down he sits, to milk the woolly dams,

And then permits their udder to the lambs.

Next seized two wretches more, and headlong cast,

Brain’d on the rock; his second dire repast.

I then approach’d him reeking with their gore,

And held the brimming goblet foaming o’er;

‘Cyclop! since human flesh has been thy feast,

Now drain this goblet, potent to digest;

Know hence what treasures in our ship we lost,

And what rich liquors other climates boast.

We to thy shore the precious freight shall bear,

If home thou send us and vouchsafe to spare.

But oh! thus furious, thirsting thus for gore,

The sons of men shall ne’er approach thy shore,

And never shalt thou taste this nectar more,’


“He heard, he took, and pouring down his throat,

Delighted, swill’d the large luxurious draught,

‘More! give me more (he cried): the boon be thine,

Whoe’er thou art that bear’st celestial wine!

Declare thy name: not mortal is this juice,

Such as the unbless’d Cyclopæan climes produce

(Though sure our vine the largest cluster yields,

And Jove’s scorn’d thunder serves to drench our fields);

But this descended from the bless’d abodes,

A rill of nectar, streaming from the gods.’


“He said, and greedy grasped the heady bowl,

Thrice drained, and poured the deluge on his soul.

His sense lay covered with the dozy fume;

While thus my fraudful speech I reassume.

‘Thy promised boon, O Cyclop! now I claim,

And plead my title; Noman is my name.

By that distinguish’d from my tender years,

’Tis what my parents call me, and my peers.