on for ten years more weeping and weaving, and after all be forced to many one of her suitors. Now, if ever, Pallas Athenè befriend me."
The stage is cleared, and the Chorus sing appropriate but not cheerful stanzas, with reference to present circumstances:—
"The Cyclops Ætnean is cruel and bold,
He murders the strangers
That sit on his hearth,
And dreads no avengers
To rise from the earth.
He roasts the men before they are cold,
He snatches them broiling from the coal,
And from the caldron pulls them whole,
And minces their flesh and gnaws their bone
With his cursed teeth till all be gone."
Ulysses re-enters; he has been surveying the Cyclopian larder and kitchen, and is as terrified by the sight of their contents as Fatima was when she rushed out of Bluebeard's chamber of horrors. He has seen Polyphemus providing for his own comforts. He kindles a huge fire,—
"Casting on the broad hearth
The knotty limbs of an enormous oak,
Three waggon-loads at least."
He spreads upon the ground a couch of pine-leaves: he milks his cows,—
"And fills a bowl
Three cubits wide and four in depth, as much
As would contain three amphoræ, and bound it
With ivy."
