cave quickly as well as safely, though its owner says that—
"Standing at the outlet,
He'll bar the way and catch them as they pass:"
but either they creep under his huge legs, like so many Gullivers in Brobdingnag, or he is a very inefficient doorkeeper—drink and pain seemingly having rendered him as incapable of hearing as of sight. Indeed Polyphemus, blind and despairing, is the only sufferer in this flight of the Ithacans. In striking at them he beats the air, or cracks his skull against the rocky wall. The Chorus taunt and misguide him. "Are these villains on my right hand?" "No, on your left,"—whereupon he dashes at vacancy, and cries, "O woe on woe, I have broken my head!" "Did you fall into the fire when drunk?" ask the mocking Chorus, who had been witnesses of the whole transaction. "'Twas Nobody destroyed me." "Then no one is to blame." "I tell you, varlets as you are, Nobody blinded me." "Then you are not blind." "Where is that accursed Nobody?" "No where, Cyclops." But at last the secret comes out. "Detested wretch, where are you?" roars the baffled monster. The wretch replies:—
"Far from you,
I keep with care this body of Ulysses.
Cycl.What do you say? You proffer a new name!
Ulys.My father named me so: and I have taken
A full revenge for your unnatural feast:
I should have done ill to burn down Troy,
