TO CASTOR AND POLLUX.

YE wild-eyed Muses, sing the Twins of Jove,
Whom the fair-ancled Leda mixed in love
With mighty Saturn's heaven-obscuring Child,
On Taygetus, that lofty mountain wild,

Brought forth in joy, mild Pollux void of blame,
And steel-subduing Castor, heirs of fame.

These are the Powers who earth-born mortals save
And ships, whose flight is swift along the wave.
When wintry tempests o'er the savage sea
Are raging, and the sailors tremblingly

Call on the Twins of Jove with prayer and vow,
Gathered in fear upon the lofty prow,

And sacrifice with snow-white lambs, the wind
And the huge billow bursting close behind,
Even then beneath the weltering waters bear
The staggering ship-they suddenly appear,
On yellow wings rushing athwart the sky,
And lull the blasts in mute tranquillity,
And strew the waves on the white ocean's bed,
Fair omen of the voyage; from toil and dread.
The sailors rest, rejoicing in the sight,
And plough the quiet sea in safe delight.

TO MINERVA.

I SING the glorious Power with azure eyes,
Athenian Pallas! tameless, chaste, and wise,
Trilogenia, town-preserving maid,

Revered and mighty; from his awful head
Whom Jove brought forth, in warlike armour drest,
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 others' praise shall unremembered be.

O BACCHUS, what a world of toil, both now
And ere these limbs were overworn with age,
Have I endured for thee! First, when thou fled'st
The mountain nymphs who nurst thee, driven afar
By the strange madness Juno sent upon thee;
Then in the battle of the sons of Earth,
When I stood foot by foot close to thy side,
No unpropitious fellow combatant,

And, driving through his shield my winged spear,

Ι

Slew vast Enceladus. Consider now,
Is it a dream of which I speak to thee?
By Jove it is not, for you have the trophies!
And now I suffer more than all before.
For, when I heard that Juno had devised
A tedious voyage for you, I put to sea
With all my children quaint in search of you,
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,
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 solitary caves;

And one of these, named Polypheme, has caught us
To be us 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 see
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 Athaa's halls?

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!

EPODE.*

An Iacchic melody
To the golden Aphrodite
Will I lift, as erst did I
Seeking her and her delight

With the Mænads, whose white feet
To the music glance and fleet.
Bacchus, O beloved, where,
Shaking wide thy yellow hair,
Wanderest thou alone, afar?
To the one-eyed Cyclops, we,
Who by right thy servants are,
Minister in misery,

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

* The Antistrophe is omitted.

CHORUS.

Go! But what needs this serious haste, O father?

SILENUS.

I see a Grecian vessel on the coast,

And thence the rowers, with some general,
Approaching to this cave. About their necks
Hang empty vessels, as they wanted food,
And water-flasks.-O miserable strangers!

Whence come they, that they know not what and who

My master is, approaching in ill hour

The inhospitable roof of Polypheme,

And the Cyclopian jaw-bone, man-destroying?
Be silent, Satyrs, while I ask and hear,

Whence coming, they arrive the Etnean hill.

ULYSSES.

Friends, can you show me some clear water spring,
The remedy of our thirst? Will any one
Furnish with food seamen in want of it?
Ha! what is this? We seem to be arrived
At the blithe court of Bacchus. I observe
This sportive band of Satyrs near the caves.
First let me greet the elder.-Hail ! ·

SILENUS.

Hail thou,

O Stranger! Tell thy country and thy race.

ULYSSES.

The Ithacan Ulysses and the king

Of Cephalonia.

SILENUS.

Oh! I know the man,

Wordy and shrewd, the son of Sisyphus.

ULYSSES.

I am the same, but do not rail upon me.