And piercing cries amid the swift pursuit Of beasts among waste mountains, such delight

Is hers, and men who know and do the right.

Nor Saturn's first-born daughter, Vesta chaste,

Whom Neptune and Apollo wooed the last,
Such was the will of ægis-bearing Jove;
But sternly she refused the ills of Love,
And by her mighty father's head she swore
An oath not unperformed, that evermore
A virgin she would live 'mid deities
Divine; her father, for such gentle ties
Renounced, gave glorious gifts; thus in his
hall

She sits and feeds luxuriously. O'er all
In every fane, her honors first arise
From men
the eldest of Divinities.

but in return,

In Venus Jove did soft desire awaken,
That, by her own enchantments overtaken,
She might, no more from human union
free,

Burn for a nursling of mortality.
For once, amid the assembled Deities,
The laughter-loving Venus from her eyes
Shot forth the light of a soft starlight
smile,

And boasting said, that she, secure the while,

Could bring at will to the assembled gods The mortal tenants of earth's dark abodes, And mortal offspring from a deathless stem She could produce in scorn and spite of

them.

Therefore he poured desire into her breast Of young Anchises,

Tritogenia, town-preserving maid,
Revered and mighty; from his awful head
Whom Jove brought forth, in warlike
armor dressed,

Golden, all radiant! wonder strange possessed

The everlasting Gods that shape to see,
Shaking a javelin keen, impetuously
Rush from the crest of Ægis-bearing Jove;
Fearfully Heaven was shaken, and did

move

Beneath the might of the Cerulean-eyed; Earth dreadfully resounded, far and wide; And, lifted from its depths, the sea swelled high

In purple billows, the tide suddenly Stood still, and great Hyperion's son long time

Checked his swift steeds, till where she stood sublime,

Pallas from her immortal shoulders threw The arms divine; wise Jove rejoiced to view.

Child of the Ægis-bearer, hail to thee, Nor thine nor other's praise shall unremembered be.

HOMER'S HYMN TO THE SUN OFFSPRING of Jove, Calliope, once more To the bright Sun thy hymn of music pour, Whom to the child of star-clad Heaven and Earth

Euryphaëssa, large-eyed nymph, brought forth;

Euryphaëssa, the famed sister fair
Of great Hyperion, who to him did bear
A race of loveliest children; the young
Morn,

Whose arms are like twin roses newly born,
The fair-haired Moon, and the immortal
Sun,

Who borne by heavenly steeds his race doth run

Unconquerably, illuming the abodes
Of mortal men and the eternal Gods.

Fiercely look forth his awe-inspiring eyes Beneath his golden helmet, whence arise And are shot forth afar clear beams of light; His countenance with radiant glory bright Beneath his graceful locks far shines around,

And the light vest with which his limbs are bound,

THE CYCLOPS;

A SATYRIC DRAMA

TRANSLATED FROM THE GREEK OF EURIPIDES

The Cyclops was translated in 1819, and published by Mrs. Shelley, Posthumous Poems, 1824. Shelley read it to Williams, November 5, 1821. He writes of it and the whole subject of translation to Hunt, November, 1819: With respect to translation, even I will not be seduced by it; although the Greek plays, and some of the ideal dramas of Calderon (with which I have lately, and with inexpressible wonder and delight, become acquainted), are perpetually tempting me to throw over their perfect and glowing forms the gray veil of my own words. And you know me too well to suspect that I refrain from a belief that what I could substitute for them would deserve the regret which yours would, if suppressed. I have confidence in my moral sense alone; but that is a kind of originality. I have only translated The Cyclops of Euripides, when I could absolutely do nothing else, and the Symposium of Plato, which is the delight and astonishinent of all who read it, I mean the original.'

SILENUS ULYSSES

CHORUS OF SATYRS THE CYCLOPS

SILENUS

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 soiltary 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

CHORUS OF SATYRS
STROPHE

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 horned thing, Wild, seditious, rambling!