Page:Essays and Studies - Swinburne (1875).pdf/223

 ing of the semichorus antiphonal to this; when Ulysses, hailed by the Cyclops, follows him out with the wine-skin, and the Chorus, secretly reassured and slily hopeful, sings to this ambiguous effect:—

Fair, with fair looks prosperous, Comes he from the halls inside; One good friend is friends with us. For thy body fair the lamp Waits alight—come, tender bride— In the caverns dewy-damp: And thine head shall soon be bound Not with single-coloured garlands round."

I translate from Dindorf's text; that given by Mr. Paley might run thus in English:—

There awaits thy flesh a lamp Of fierce fire, no tender bride," &c.

The "lamp" would then be, of course, the firebrand prepared to blind Polyphemus, and the two last lines, in the words of the editor (vol. iii. p. 509), "mean that in the place of a crown of myrtle and roses a ring of gory hue shall encircle his brows." In either case I suppose the ironic allusions to the torch of marriage and the marriage-wreath of divers colours must be the same.

There is no gap in the translation at v. 675, and the asterisks inserted after the words "Nowhere, O Cyclops," would be better away. The passage describing the cookery of Polyphemus (vv. 390-395) is difficult and debateable enough, but less hard than the desperate version of Shelley, who in his note "confesses that he does not understand this." The reading "four amphoræ," just above, is a misprint or slip of the pen for "ten;" the next few words are curiously tumbled together and mis-