haste; but, when he saw
  Trojans and Trojan arms, in mid career
  Stopp’d short, he back recoiled as one surprised: 
  But soon recovering speed he ran, he flew
  Precipitant, and thus with piteous cries
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  Our ears assailed:  ’By heaven’s eternal fires,
  By every god that sits enthroned on high,
  By this good light, relieve a wretch forlorn,
  And bear me hence to any distant shore,
  So I may shun this savage race accursed. 
  ’Tis true I fought among the Greeks that late
  With sword and fire o’erturned Neptunian Troy
  And laid the labours of the gods in dust;
  For which, if so the sad offence deserves,
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  Plunged in the deep, for ever let me lie
  Whelmed under seas; if death must be my doom,
  Let man inflict it, and I die well-pleased.’ 
     He ended here, and now profuse to tears
  In suppliant mood fell prostrate at our feet: 
  We bade him speak from whence and what he was,
  And how by stress of fortune sunk thus low;
  Anchises too, with friendly aspect mild,
  Gave him his hand, sure pledge of amity;
  When, thus encouraged, he began his tale.
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     ‘I’m one,’ says he, ’of poor descent; my name
  Is Achaemenides, my country Greece;
  Ulysses’ sad compeer, who, whilst he fled
  The raging Cyclops, left me here behind,
  Disconsolate, forlorn; within the cave
  He left me, giant Polypheme’s dark cave;
  A dungeon wide and horrible, the walls
  On all sides furred with mouldy damps, and hung
  With clots of ropy gore, and human limbs,
  His dire repast:  himself of mighty size,
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  Hoarse in his voice, and in his visage grim,
  Intractable, that riots on the flesh
  Of mortal men, and swills the vital blood. 
  Him did I see snatch up with horrid grasp
  Two sprawling Greeks, in either hand a man;
  I saw him when with huge, tempestuous sway
  He dashed and broke them on the grundsil edge;
  The pavement swam in blood, the walls around
  Were spattered o’er with brains.  He lapp’d the blood,
  And chewed the tender flesh still warm with life,
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  That swelled and heaved itself amidst his teeth
  As sensible of pain.  Not less meanwhile
  Our chief, incensed and studious of revenge,
  Plots his destruction, which he thus effects. 
  The giant, gorged with flesh, and wine, and blood,
  Lay stretched at length and snoring in his den,
  Belching raw gobbets from his maw, o’ercharged
  With purple wine and cruddled gore confused. 
  We gathered round, and to his single eye,
  The single eye that in his forehead glared
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  Like a full moon, or a broad burnished shield,
  A forky staff we dexterously applied,
  Which, in the spacious socket turning round,
  Scooped out the big round jelly from its orb. 
  But let me not thus interpose delays;
  Fly, mortals, fly this cursed, detested