ss bodies take
In his huge hand, whom straight he fell athwart a stone to break
As there he lay upon his back; I saw the threshold swim
With spouted blood, I saw him grind each bloody dripping limb,
I saw the joints amidst his teeth all warm and quivering still.
--He payed therefore, for never might Ulysses bear such ill,
Nor was he worser than himself in such a pinch bestead:
For when with victual satiate, deep sunk in wine, his head 630
Fell on his breast, and there he lay enormous through the den,
Snorting out gore amidst his sleep, with gobbets of the men
And mingled blood and wine; then we sought the great Gods with prayer
And drew the lots, and one and all crowded about him there,
And bored out with a sharpened pike the eye that used to lurk
Enormous lonely 'neath his brow overhanging grim and mirk,
As great a shield of Argolis, or Phoebus' lamp on high;
And so our murdered fellows' ghosts avenged we joyously.
--But ye, O miserable men, flee forth! make haste to pluck
The warping hawser from the shore! 640
For even such, and e'en so great as Polypheme in cave
Shuts in the wealth of woolly things and draws the udders' wave,
An hundred others commonly dwell o'er these curving bights,
Unutterable Cyclop folk, or stray about the heights.
Thrice have the twin horns of the moon fulfilled the circle clear
While I have dragged out life in woods and houses of the deer,
And gardens of the beasts; and oft from rocky place on high
Trembling I note the Cyclops huge, hear foot and voice go by.
And evil meat of wood-berries, and cornel's flinty fruit 649
The bush-boughs give; on grass at whiles I browse, and plucked-up root
So wandering all about, at last I see unto the shore
Your ships a-coming: thitherward my steps in haste I bore:
Whate'er might hap enough it was to flee this folk of ill;
Rather do ye in any wise the life within me spill.'

And scarcely had he said the word ere on the hill above
The very shepherd Polypheme his mountain mass did move,
A marvel dread, a shapeless trunk, an eyeless monstrous thing,
Who down unto the shore well known his sheep was shepherding;
A pine-tree in the hand of him leads on and stays his feet;
The woolly sheep his fellows are, his only pleasure sweet, 660
The only solace