And I myself stood on the beaked prow
And fixed the naked mast; and all my boys
Leaning upon their oars, with splash and strain
Made white with foam the green and purple sea,—­ 20
And so we sought you, king.  We were sailing
Near Malea, when an eastern wind arose,
And drove us to this waste Aetnean rock;
The one-eyed children of the Ocean God,
The man-destroying Cyclopses, inhabit, 25
On this wild shore, their solitary 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. 30
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 35
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 see 40
My children tending the flocks hitherward. 
Ha! what is this? are your Sicinnian measures
Even now the same, as when with dance and song
You brought young Bacchus to Althaea’s halls?

NOTE: 
23 waste B.; wild 1824; ‘cf. 26, where waste is cancelled for wild’
    (Locock).

CHORUS OF SATYRS: 

STROPHE: 
Where has he of race divine 45
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 50
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 55
Will I throw to mend your breeding;—­
Get along, you horned thing,
Wild, seditious, rambling!

EPODE: 
An Iacchic melody
To the golden Aphrodite 60
Will I lift, as erst did I
Seeking her and her delight
With the Maenads, whose white feet
To the music glance and fleet. 
Bacchus, O beloved, where, 65
Shaking wide thy yellow hair,
Wanderest thou alone, afar? 
To the one-eyed Cyclops, we,
Who by right thy servants are,
Minister in misery, 70
In these wretched goat-skins clad,
Far from thy delights and thee.

SILENUS: 
Be silent, sons; command the slaves to drive
The gathered flocks into the rock-roofed cave.