Page:The complete poetical works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, including materials never before printed in any edition of the poems.djvu/740

710

Come, Maron, come

Raging let him fix the doom,

Let him tear the eyelid up

Of the Cyclops—that his cup

May be evil!

Oh! I long to dance and revel

With sweet Bromian, long desired,

In loved ivy wreaths attired;

Leaving this abandoned home—

Will the moment ever come?

Be silent, ye wild things! Nay, hold your peace,

And keep your lips quite close; dare not to breathe,

Or spit, or e'en wink, lest ye wake the monster,

Until his eye be tortured out with fire.

Nay, we are silent, and we chaw the air.

Come now, and lend a hand to the great stake

Within—it is delightfully red hot.

You then command who first should seize the stake

To burn the Cyclops' eye, that all may share

In the great enterprise.

We are too far;

We cannot at this distance from the door

Thrust fire into his eye.

And we just now

Have become lame! cannot move hand or foot.

The same thing has occurred to us,—our ankles

Are sprained with standing here, I know not how.

What, sprained with standing still?

And there is dust

Or ashes in our eyes, I know not whence.

Cowardly dogs! ye will not aid me then?

With pitying my own back and my back-bone,

And with not wishing all my teeth knocked out,

This cowardice comes of itself—but stay,

I know a famous Orphic incantation

To make the brand stick of its own accord

Into the skull of this one-eyed son of Earth.

Of old I knew ye thus by nature; now

I know ye better.—I will use the aid

Of my own comrades. Yet though weak of hand

Speak cheerfully, that so ye may awaken

The courage of my friends with your blithe words.

This I will do with peril of my life,

And blind you with my exhortations, Cyclops.

Hasten and thrust,

And parch up to dust,

The eye of the beast

Who feeds on his guest.

Burn and blind

The Aetnean hind!

