Page:The complete poetical works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, including materials never before printed in any edition of the poems.djvu/728

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In these wretched goat-skins clad,

Far from thy delights and thee.

Be silent, sons; command the slaves to drive

The gathered flocks into the rock-roofed cave.

Go! But what needs this serious haste, O father?

I see a Grecian vessel on the coast,

And thence the rowers with some general

Approaching to this cave.—About their necks

Hang empty vessels, as they wanted food,

And water-flasks.—Oh, miserable strangers!

Whence come they, that they know not what and who

My master is, approaching in ill hour

The inhospitable roof of Polypheme,

And the Cyclopian jaw-bone, man-destroying?

Be silent, Satyrs, while I ask and hear

Whence coming, they arrive the Aetnean hill.

Friends, can you show me some clear water-spring,

The remedy of our thirst? Will any one

Furnish with food seamen in want of it?

Ha! what is this? We seem to be arrived

At the blithe court of Bacchus. I observe

This sportive band of Satyrs near the caves.

First let me greet the elder.—Hail!

Hail thou,

O Stranger! tell thy country and thy race.

The Ithacan Ulysses and the king

Of Cephalonia.

Oh! I know the man,

Wordy and shrewd, the son of Sisyphus.

I am the same, but do not rail upon me.—

Whence sailing do you come to Sicily?

From Ilion, and from the Trojan toils.

How, touched you not at your paternal shore?

The strength of tempests core me here by force.

The self-same accident occurred to me.

Were you then driven here by stress of weather?

Following the Pirates who had kidnapped Bacchus.

What land is this, and who inhabit it?—

Aetna, the loftiest peak in Sicily.

And are there walls, and tower-surrounded towns?

There are not.—These lone rocks are bare of men.

And who possess the land? the race of beasts?

Cyclops, who live in caverns, not in houses.

Obeying whom? Or is the state popular?

Shepherds: no one obeys any in aught.

How live they? do they sow the corn of Ceres?

On milk and cheese, and on the flesh of sheep.

Have they the Bromian drink from the vine's stream?

Ah! no; they live in an ungracious land. 