Page:The complete poetical works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, including materials never before printed in any edition of the poems.djvu/731

Rh I have been beaten till I burn with fever.

By whom? Who laid his fist upon your head?

Those men, because I would not suffer them

To steal your goods.

Did not the rascals know

I am a God, sprung from the race of Heaven?

I told them so, but they bore off your things,

And ate the cheese in spite of all I said,

And carried out the lambs—and said, moreover,

They'd pin you down with a three-cubit collar,

And pull your vitals out through your one eye,

Furrow your back with stripes, then, binding you,

Throw you as ballast into the ship's hold,

And then deliver you, a slave, to move

Enormous rocks, or found a vestibule.

In truth? Nay, haste, and place in order quickly

The cooking-knives, and heap upon the hearth,

And kindle it, a great faggot of wood.—

As soon as they are slaughtered, they shall fill

My belly, broiling warm from the live coals,

Or boiled and seethed within the bubbling caldron.

I am quite sick of the wild mountain game;

Of stags and lions I have gorged enough,

And I grow hungry for the flesh of men.

Nay, master, something new is very pleasant

After one thing forever, and of late

Very few strangers have approached our cave.

Hear, Cyclops, a plain tale on the other side.

We, wanting to buy food, came from our ship

Into the neighbourhood of your cave, and here

This old Silenus gave us in exchange

These lambs for wine, the which he took and drank,

And all by mutual compact, without force.

There is no word of truth in what he says,

For slyly he was selling all your store.

I? May you perish, wretch—

If I speak false!

Cyclops, I swear by Neptune who begot thee,

By mighty Triton and by Nereus old,

Calypso and the glaucous Ocean Nymphs,

The sacred waves and all the race of fishes—

Be these the witnesses, my dear sweet master,

My darling little Cyclops, that I never

Gave any of your stores to these false strangers;—

If I speak false may those whom most I love,

My children, perish wretchedly!

There stop!

I saw him giving these things to the strangers.

If I speak false, then may my father perish,

But do not thou wrong hospitality.

 216 Furrow B.; Torture (evidently misread for Furrow) 1824.

