Their sons exult in youth's new budding gladness, And their fresh daughters, free from care or sad
With bloom-inwoven dance and happy song,
On the soft flowers the meadow-grass among, Leap round them sporting; such delights by thee Are given, rich Power, revered Divinity.
Mother of gods, thou wife of starry Heaven, Farewell! be thou propitious, and be given A happy life for this brief melody,
Nor thou nor other songs shall unremembered be.
O BACCHUS, what a world of toil, both now And ere these limbs were overworn with age, Have I endured for thee! First, when thou fled'st The mountain-nymphs who nursed thee, driven
By the strange madness Juno sent upon thee;
Then in the battle of the sons of Earth,
When I stood foot by foot close to thy side,
No unpropitious fellow-combatant,
And, driving through his shield my winged spear, Slew vast Enceladus. Consider now,
Is it a dream of which I speak to thee? By Jove it is not, for you have the trophies! And now I suffer more than all before. For when I heard that Juno had devised A tedious voyage for you, I put to sea With all my children quaint in search of you, And I myself stood on the beaked prow And fixed the naked mast; and all my boys
The Cyclops. Published by Mrs. Shelley, 1824, dated 1819.
Leaning upon their oars, with splash and strain Made white with foam the green and purple sea. And so we sought you, king. We were sailing Near Malea, when an eastern wind arose, And drove us to this wild Etnean rock; The one-eyed children of the Ocean God, The man-destroying Cyclopses inhabit, On this wild shore, their solitary caves,
And one of these, named Polypheme, has caught us To be his slaves; and so, for all delight
Of Bacchic sports, sweet dance and melody, We keep this lawless giant's wandering flocks. My sons indeed, on far declivities,
Young things themselves, tend on the youngling sheep,
But I remain to fill the water casks,
Or sweeping the hard floor, or ministering Some impious and abominable meal
To the fell Cyclops. I am wearied of it! And now I must scrape up the littered floor With this great iron rake, so to receive My absent master and his evening sheep In a cave neat and clean. Even now I see My children tending the flocks hitherward. Ha! what is this? are your Sicinnian measures Even now the same as when with dance and song You brought young Bacchus to Althæa's halls?
Where has he of race divine
Wandered in the winding rocks?
Here the air is calm and fine For the father of the flocks; Here the grass is soft and sweet, And the river-eddies meet In the trough beside the cave, Bright as in their fountain wave. Neither here, nor on the dew Of the lawny uplands feeding? Oh, you come! a stone at you
Will I throw to mend your breeding;
Get along, you hornèd thing,
Wild, seditious, rambling!
An Iacchic melody
To the golden Aphrodite Will I lift, as erst did I
Seeking her and her delight
With the Mænads whose white feet To the music glance and fleet. Bacchus, O beloved, where, Shaking wide thy yellow hair, Wanderest thou alone, afar?
To the one-eyed Cyclops, we, Who by right thy servants are, Minister in misery,
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 Ætnean 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!
O Stranger! tell thy country and thy race.
76 Grecian vessel on, Mrs. Shelley, 18391 || Greek ship's boat upon, Mrs. Shelley, 1824.
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