Page:The Iliad and Odyssey of Homer (IA iliadodysseyofho02home).pdf/218

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210
HOMER's ODYSSEY.
Book IX.

Them answer'd, then, Polypheme from his cave.
Oh, friends! I die! and Outis gives the blow.
To whom with accents wing'd his friends without. 580
If no [1]man harm thee, but thou art alone,
And sickness feel'st, it is the stroke of Jove,
And thou must bear it; yet invoke for aid
Thy father Neptune, Sovereign of the floods.
So saying, they went, and in my heart I laugh'd 585
That by the fiction only of a name,
Slight stratagem! I had deceived them all.
Then groan'd the Cyclops wrung with pain and grief,
And, fumbling, with stretch'd hands, removed the rock
From his cave's mouth, which done, he sat him down
Spreading his arms athwart the pass, to stop 591
Our egress with his flocks abroad; so dull,
It seems, he held me, and so ill-advised.
I, pondering what means might fittest prove
To save from instant death, (if save I might) 595
My people and myself, to ev'ry shift
Inclined, and various counsels framed, as one
Who strove for life, conscious of woe at hand.
To me, thus meditating, this appear'd
The likeliest course. The rams well-thriven were, 600
Thick-fleeced, full-sized, with wool of sable hue.
These, silently, with osier twigs on which
The Cyclops, hideous monster, slept, I bound,

  1. Outis, as a name could only denote him who bore it; but as a noun, it signifies no man, which accounts sufficiently for the ludicrous mistake of his brethren.

Three