Most musical Cyclops!

SILENUS.

POLYPHEME.

Hush!-Unto the beach

I wearily strode, with great head bow'd, and dragg'd
Foot-echoes after me; and with no speech,

On yonder shore, weedy and wet and cragg'd,
I stood, and in an agony of pain

Look'd out with widening eyeball on the main.
Lo! far away a white wind glided dim

O'er the cloud-cover'd bright'ning ocean-rim,
And violet shadows here and there were trail'd

Over the waters: then behold the sun

Flasht pale across the waste, and one by one,
Like sea-gulls dripping rain, rose ships white-sail'd.
All else was silence, save monotonous moan
Of the broad-chested billows, till the warm
Light kindled all things, and I loomed alone-
The one huge cloud remaining of the storm;
And in the awfulness of that strange hour
A change came over my big throbbing breast,

And the soft picture of the calm had power

To move my mountainous bulk with vague unrest

SILENUS.

Weep not, O Cyclops-lest thy tears should roll Down oceanward and brain the grazing sheep!

POLYPHEME.

Ay me, ay me, the passion in my soul !
Ay me, her glory haunts me, and I weep!—

Gentle Silenus !

SILENUS.

Beautiful Cyclops!

POLYPHEME.

Nay,

Not beautiful, Silenus?

SILENUS.

But I say

Most beautiful, and fearlessly I dare

Utter the truth. By him whose shoulders bear

K

The great round world, by Atlas' self, I swear

Thou art most fair!

POLYPHEME.

O, I would give away the world to be

As soft, as sweet, as fleecy-limb'd as she,

As tiny and as tender and as white

As her mild loveliness!

With two soft eyes such as mere men possess,
Two pretty little dewy eyes, that might
Interpret me aright!

SILENUS.

Amazement !-Polypheme, whom vast Poseidon Spawn'd upon Thoosa in the salted brine,

Thou who canst strangle fleets, and sit astride on Ætna and roar your origin divine!

Wrong not thyself, thy beauty, and thy sire!

See! where your mighty shadow stretches wide

Down the steep mountain side,

And see that eyeball of immortal fire!

Had wanton Helen, Paris' love-sick toy,

Beheld thee, Polypheme,

Hill-haunting Echo had not found a theme

In ruin and the ten years' war of Troy.

Enough-let us return. I stood,

When she had flown, in meditative mood;

Then, raising up my resinous hands, I cried:

"O thou from whose huge loins I darkling came,

King of all ocean and its wondrous races,

Return, return, the nymph to my embraces,

Or, thro' thy lips ooze-dripping, name her name!"
And o'er the sands did a low murmur creep,
Whispering, 'Galatea ;' and, deep-pain'd,

I vaguely knew, like one who dreams in sleep,
She was a goddess of the sacred deep,

Not to be lightly won or roughly gain'd.

O pitiful! and you

SILENUS.

POLYPHEME.

In the dim birth

Of the strange love that stirs my hid blood's fountains,
As unborn earthquakes trouble springs in mountains,
I look'd abroad upon the fair green earth;

And lo, all things that lived, all things that stirr'd,
Unto the very daisy closing up

In my great shade its crimson-tipped cup,
And the small lambs, and every little bird,
Seem'd to abhor and dread, avoid and fear me ;
And in an agony of hate for all,

I cried "How can a thing so sweet, so small,
So gentle, love me—or be happy near me?"
Whereon I sadly clomb the cliffs and made
A looking-glass of yonder ocean, where

Startled by my long shade

The silver-bellied fishes rose afraid;

But with a lover's hand I smooth'd my hair

To sleekness, parting it with care,