Page:The complete poetical works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, including materials never before printed in any edition of the poems.djvu/727

Rh The one-eyed children of the Ocean God,

The man-destroying Cyclopses, inhabit,

On this wild shore, their solitary caves,

And one of these, named Polypheme, has caught us

To be his slaves; and so, for all delight

Of Bacchic sports, sweet dance and melody,

We keep this lawless giant's wandering flocks.

My sons indeed, on far declivities,

Young things themselves, tend on the youngling sheep,

But I remain to fill the water-casks,

Or sweeping the hard floor, or ministering

Some impious and abominable meal

To the fell Cyclops. I am wearied of it!

And now I must scrape up the littered floor

With this great iron rake, so to receive

My absent master and his evening sheep

In a cave neat and clean. Even now I see

My children tending the flocks hitherward.

Ha! what is this? are your Sicinnian measures

Even now the same, as when with dance and song

You brought young Bacchus to Althaea's halls?

Where has he of race divine

Wandered in the winding rocks?

Here the air is calm and fine

For the father of the flocks;—

Here the grass is soft and sweet,

And the river-eddies meet

In the trough beside the cave,

Bright as in their fountain wave.—

Neither here, nor on the dew

Of the lawny uplands feeding?

Oh, you come!—a stone at you

Will I throw to mend your breeding;—

Get along, you hornèd thing,

Wild, seditious, rambling!

An Iacchic melody

To the golden Aphrodite

Will I lift, as erst did I

Seeking her and her delight

With the Maenads, whose white feet

To the music glance and fleet.

Bacchus, O belovèd, where,

Shaking wide thy yellow hair,

Wanderest thou alone, afar?

To the one-eyed Cyclops, we,

Who by right thy servants are,

Minister in misery, 