When from the eastern waves the light of morn
began to peer, and from the upper sky
Aurora flamed away the dark and dew,
out of the forest sprang a startling shape
of hunger-wasted misery; a man
in wretched guise, who shoreward came with hands
outstretched in supplication. We turned back
and scanned him well. All grime and foulness he,
with long and tangled beard, his savage garb
fastened with thorns; but in all else he seemed
a Greek, and in his country's league of arms
sent to the seige of Troy. Then he beheld
the Dardan habit, and our Trojan steel,
he somewhat paused, as if in dread dismay
such sight to see, and falteringly moved;
but soon with headlong steps he sought the shore,
ejaculating broken sobs and prayers:
“By stars above! By gods on high! O, hear!
By this bright heavenly air we mortals breathe,
save me, sweet Trojans! Carry me away
unto what land ye will! I ask no more.
I came, I know it, in the ships of Greece;
and I did war, 't is true, with Ilium's gods.
O, if the crime deserve it, fling my corse
on yonder waves, and in the boundless brine
sink me forever! Give me in my death
the comfort that by human hands I die.”
He clasped our knees, and writhing on his own
clung fast. We bid him tell his race and name,
and by what fate pursued.
Anchises gave
his own right hand in swift and generous aid,
and by prompt token cheered the exile's heart,
who, banishing his fears, poured forth this tale :—
“My home was Ithaca, and I partook
the fortunes of Ulysses evil-starred.
My name is Achemenides, my sire
was Adamastus, and I sailed for Troy,
being so poor,—O, that I ne'er had change
the lot I bore! In yon vast Cyclops' cave
my comrades, flying from its gruesome door,
left me behind, forgotten. 'T is a house
of gory feasts of flesh, 't is deep and dark,
and vaulted high. He looms as high as heaven;
I pray the blessed gods to rid the earth
of the vile monster! None can look on him,
none speak with him. He feeds on clotted gore
of disembowelled men. These very eyes
saw him seize two of our own company,
and, as he lolled back in the cave, he clutched
and dashed them on the stones, fouling the floor
with torrent of their blood; myself I saw him
crunch with his teeth the dripping, bloody limbs
still hot and pulsing on his hungry jaw.
But not without reward! For such a sight
Ulysses would not brook, and Ithaca
forgot not in such strait the name he bore.
For soon as, gorged with feasting and o'ercome
with drunken slumber, the foul giant lay
sprawled through the cave, his head dropped helpless down,
disgorging as he slept thick drool of gore
and gobbets drenched with bloody wine; then we,
calling on Heaven and taking place by lot,
drew round him like one man, and with a beam
sharpened at end bored out that monster eye,
which, huge and sole, lay under the grim brow,
round as an Argive shield or Phoebus' star.
Thus took we joyful vengeance for the shades
of our lost mates. But, O ill-fated men!
Fly, I implore, and cut the cables free
along the beach! For in the land abide,
like Polyphemus, who in hollow cave
kept fleecy sheep, and milked his fruitful ewes,
a hundred other, huge as he, who rove
wide o'er this winding shore and mountains fair:
Cyclops accursed, bestial! Thrice the moon
has filled her horns with light, while here I dwell
in lonely woods and lairs of creatures wild;
or from tall cliffs out-peering I discern
the Cyclops, and shrink shuddering from the sound
of their vast step and cry.
My sorry fare
is berries and hard corners dropped from trees,
or herb-roots torn out from the niggard ground.
Though watching the whole sea, only today
Have I had sight of ships. To you I fled.
Whate'er ye be, it was my only prayer
to 'scape that monster brood. I ask no more.
O, set me free by any death ye will!”
He scarce had said, when moving o'er the crest
of a high hill a giant shape we saw:
that shepherd Polyphemus, with his flocks
down-wending to the well-known water-side;
huge, shapeless, horrible, with blinded eye,
bearing a lopped pine for a staff, he made
his footing sure, while the white, fleecy sheep,
sole pleasure now, and solace of his woes,
ran huddling at his side.
Soon to the vast flood of the level brine
he came, and washed the flowing gore away
from that out-hollowed eye; he gnashed his teeth,
groaning, and deep into the watery way
stalked on, his tall bulk wet by scarce a wave.
We fled in haste, though far, and with us bore
the truthful suppliant; cut silently
the anchor-ropes, and, bending to the oar,
swept on with eager strokes clean out to sea.
Aware he was, and toward our loud halloo
whirled sudden round; but when no power had he
to seize or harm, nor could his fierce pursuit
o'ertake the Ionian surges as they rolled,
he raised a cry incredible; the sea
with all its billows trembled; the wide shore
of Italy from glens and gorges moaned,
and Aetna roared from every vaulted cave.
Then rallied from the grove-clad, Iofty isle
the Cyclops' clan, and lined the beach and bay.
We saw each lonely eyeball glare in vain,
as side by side those brothers Aetna-born
stood towering high, a conclave dark and dire:
as when, far up some mountain's famous crest,
wind-fronting oaks or cone-clad cypresses
have made assembling in the solemn hills,
Jove's giant wood or Dian's sacred grove.
We, terror-struck, would fly we knew not where,
with loosened sheet and canvas swelling strong
before a welcome wind; but Helenus
bade us both Scylla and Charybdis fear,
where 'twixt the twain death straitly hems the way;
and so the counsel was to veer our bark
the course it came. But lo! a northern gale
burst o'er us from Pelorus' narrowed side,
and on we rode far past Pantagia's bay
of unhewn rock, and past the haven strong
of Megara, and Thapsus lying low.
Such were the names retold, and such the shores
shown us by Achemenides, whose fate
made him familiar there, for he had sailed
with evil-starred Ulysses o'er that sea.
Off the Sicilian shore an island lies,
wave-washed Plemmyrium, called in olden days
Ortygia; here Alpheus, river-god,
from Elis flowed by secret sluice, they say,
beneath the sea, and mingles at thy mouth,
fair Arethusa! with Sicilian waves.
Our voices hailed the great gods of the land
with reverent prayer; then skirted we the shore,
where smooth Helorus floods the fruitful plain.
Under Pachynus' beetling precipice
we kept our course; then Camarina rose
in distant view, firm-seated evermore
by Fate's decree; and that far-spreading vale
of Gela, with the name of power it takes
from its wide river; and, uptowering far,
the ramparts of proud Acragas appeared,
where fiery steeds were bred in days of old.
Borne by the winds, along thy coast I fled,
Selinus, green with palm! and past the shore
of Lilybaeum with its treacherous reef;
till at the last the port of Drepanum
received me to its melancholy strand.
Here, woe is me I outworn by stormful seas,
my sire, sole comfort of my grievous doom,
Anchises ceased to be. O best of sires!
Here didst thou leave me in the weary way;
through all our perils—O the bitter loss! —
borne safely, but in vain. King Helenus,
whose prophet-tongue of dark events foretold,
spoke not this woe; nor did Celeno's curse
of this forebode. Such my last loss and pain;
such, of my weary way, the destined goal.
From thence departing, the divine behest
impelled me to thy shores, O listening queen!
Such was, while all gave ear, the tale sublime
father Aeneas, none but he, set forth
of wanderings and of dark decrees divine:
silent at last, he ceased, and took repose.
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