Page:The complete poetical works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, including materials never before printed in any edition of the poems.djvu/734

704 The Cyclops Aetnean is cruel and bold,

He murders the strangers

That sit on his hearth,

And dreads no avengers

To rise from the earth.

He roasts the men before they are cold,

He snatches them broiling from the coal,

And from the caldron pulls them whole,

And minces their flesh and gnaws their bone

With his cursèd teeth, till all be gone.

Farewell, foul pavilion:

Farewell, rites of dread!

The Cyclops vermilion,

With slaughter uncloying,

Now feasts on the dead,

In the flesh of strangers joying!

O Jupiter! I saw within the cave

Horrible things; deeds to be feigned in words,

But not to be believed as being done.

What! sawest thou the impious Polypheme

Feasting upon your loved companions now?

Selecting two, the plumpest of the crowd,

He grasped them in his hands.—

Unhappy man!

Soon as we came into this craggy place,

Kindling a fire, he cast on the broad hearth

The knotty limbs of an enormous oak,

Three waggon-loads at least, and then he strewed

Upon the ground, beside the red firelight,

His couch of pine-leaves; and he milked the cows,

And pouring forth the white milk, filled a bowl

Three cubits wide and four in depth, as much

As would contain ten amphorae, and bound it

With ivy wreaths; then placed upon the fire

A brazen pot to boil, and made red hot

The points of spits, not sharpened with the sickle,

But with a fruit tree bough, and with the jaws

Of axes for Aetnean slaughterings.

And when this God-abandoned Cook of Hell

Had made all ready, he seized two of us

And killed them in a kind of measured manner;

For he flung one against the brazen rivets

Of the huge caldron, and seized the other

By the foot's tendon, and knocked out his brains

Upon the sharp edge of the craggy stone:

Then peeled his flesh with a great cooking-knife

And put him down to roast. The other's limbs

 369 not to be believed B.; not believed 1824.

382 ten ''cj. Swinburne; four 1824; four cancelled for ten (possibly) B''. 