Page:The complete poetical works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, including materials never before printed in any edition of the poems.djvu/732

702  You lie! I swear that he is juster far

Than Rhadamanthus—I trust more in him.

But let me ask, whence have ye sailed, O strangers?

Who are you? And what city nourished ye?

Our race is Ithacan—having destroyed

The town of Troy, the tempests of the sea

Have driven us on thy land, O Polypheme.

What, have ye shared in the unenvied spoil

Of the false Helen, near Scamander's stream?

The same, having endured a woful toil.

Oh, basest expedition! sailed ye not

From Greece to Phrygia for one woman's sake?

'Twas the Gods' work—no mortal was in fault.

But, O great Offspring of the Ocean-King,

We pray thee and admonish thee with freedom,

That thou dost spare thy friends who visit thee,

And place no impious food within thy jaws.

For in the depths of Greece we have upreared

Temples to thy great Father, which are all

His homes. The sacred bay of Taenarus

Remains inviolate, and each dim recess

Scooped high on the Malean promontory,

And aëry Sunium's silver- veinèd crag,

Which divine Pallas keeps unprofaned ever,

The Gerastian asylums, and whate'er

Within wide Greece our enterprise has kept

From Phrygian contumely; and in which

You have a common care, for you inhabit

The skirts of Grecian land, under the roots

Of Aetna and its crags, spotted with fire.

Turn then to converse under human laws,

Receive us shipwrecked suppliants, and provide

Food, clothes, and fire, and hospitable gifts;

Nor fixing upon oxen-piercing spits

Our limbs, so fill your belly and your jaws.

Priam's wide land has widowed Greece enough;

And weapon-wingèd murder heaped together

Enough of dead, and wives are husbandless,

And ancient women and gray fathers wail

Their childless age;—if you should roast the rest—

And 'tis a bitter feast that you prepare—

Where then would any turn? Yet be persuaded;

Forgo the lust of your jaw-bone; prefer

Pious humanity to wicked will:

Many have bought too dear their evil joys.

Let me advise you, do not spare a morsel

Of all his flesh. If you should eat his tongue

You would become most eloquent, O Cyclops.

Wealth, my good fellow, is the wise man's God,

All other things are a pretence and boast.

What are my father's ocean promontories, 