Classic Poem

ULYSSES . But, o great offspring of the Ocean King,
We pray thee, and admonish thee with freedom,
That thou dost spare thy friends who visit thee,
And place no impious food within your jaws.
For in the depths of Greece we have upreared
Temples to thy great father, which are all
His homes — the sacred bay of Taenarus
Remains inviolate, and each dim recess
Scooped high on the Malean promontory,
And aery Sunium's silver-veined crag,
Which divine Athens keeps unprofaned ever,
And the Gerastian outlets, and whate'er
Within wide Greece our enterprise has kept
From Phrygian contumely, and in which
You have a common care, for you inhabit
The skirts of Grecian land, under the roots
Of Aetna, and its crags spotted with fire —
Turn then to converse under human laws,
Receive us shipwrecked suppliants, and provide
Food, clothes and fire, and hospitable gifts,
Nor, fixing upon oxen-piercing spits
Our limbs, so fill your belly and your jaw. —
Priam's wide land has widowed Greece enough
And weapon-winged murder heaped together
Enough of dead, and wives are husbandless
And ancient women and grey fathers wail
Their childless age — if you should roast the rest
(And 'tis a bitter feast that you prepare)
Where then would any turn? — yet be persuaded,
Forego this lust of your jaw-bone . . . prefer
Pious humanity to wicked will . . .
Many have bought too dear their evil joys.
SILENUS . Let me advise you . . . do not spare a morsel
Of all that flesh. What, would you eat your words
And be a vain and babbling boaster, Cyclops?
CYCLOPS . Wealth, my good fellow, is the wise man's god,
All other things are a pretence and boast.
What are my father's Ocean promontories,
The sacred rocks whereon he dwells, to me?
Stranger, I laugh to scorn Jove's thunderbolt. —
I know not that his strength is more than mine.
As to the rest I care not . . . when he pours
Rain from above, I have a close pavilion
Under this rock, in which I lay supine
Feasting on a roast calf, or some wild beast,
And drinking pans of milk, and gloriously
Emulating the thunder of high Heaven;
And when the Thracian wind pours down the snow
I wrap my body in the skins of beasts,
Kindle a fire, and bid the snow whirl on. —
The earth by force, whether it will or no,
Bringing forth grass fattens my flocks and herds
Which, to what other God but to myself
And this great belly, first of deities,
Should I be bound to sacrifice? Know this,
That Jupiter himself instructs the wise,
To eat and drink during their little day,
Forbidding them to plague him — as for those
Who complicate with laws the life of man,
He has appointed tears for their reward.
I will not cheat my soul of its delight
Or hesitate in dining upon you —
And that I may be quit of all demands
These are my hospitable gifts . . . fierce fire
And yon ancestral cauldron, which o'erbubbling
Shall finely cook your miserable flesh. —