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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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Since nothing more than death my crime demands, I die content, to die by human hands.' He said, and on his knees my knees embrac'd: I bade him boldly tell his fortune past, His present state, his lineage, and his name, Th' occasion of his fears, and whence he came. The good Anchises rais'd him with his hand; Who, thus encourag'd, answer'd our demand: 'From Ithaca, my native soil, I came To Troy; and Achaemenides my name. Me my poor father with Ulysses sent; (O had I stay'd, with poverty content!) But, fearful for themselves, my countrymen Left me forsaken in the Cyclops' den. The cave, tho' large, was dark; the dismal floor Was pav'd with mangled limbs and putrid gore. Our monstrous host, of more than human size, Erects his head, and stares within the skies; Bellowing his voice, and horrid is his hue. Ye gods, remove this plague from mortal view! The joints of slaughter'd wretches are his food; And for his wine he quaffs the streaming blood. These eyes beheld, when with his spacious hand He seiz'd two captives of our Grecian band; Stretch'd on his back, he dash'd against the stones Their broken bodies, and their crackling bones: With spouting blood the purple pavement swims, While the dire glutton grinds the trembling limbs. "'Not unreveng'd Ulysses bore their fate, Nor thoughtless of his own unhappy state; For, gorg'd with flesh, and drunk with human wine While fast asleep the giant lay supine, Snoring aloud, and belching from his maw His indigested foam, and morsels raw; We pray; we cast the lots, and then surround The monstrous body, stretch'd along the ground: Each, as he could approach him, lends a hand To bore his eyeball with a flaming brand. Beneath his frowning forehead lay his eye; For only one did the vast frame supply- But that a globe so large, his front it fill'd, Like the sun's disk or like a Grecian shield. The stroke succeeds; and down the pupil bends: This vengeance follow'd for our slaughter'd friends. |
