Classics Reader

O white Galateia, why do you throw off the one who loves you,

whiter than curd to look at, softer than a lamb, friskier than a calf, sleeker than an unripe grape?

And you come, just like that, the moment sweet sleep takes hold of me,

and you are off and gone the moment sweet sleep releases me,

and you run off like a ewe that has caught sight of a grey wolf?

I fell in love with you, girl, on the day you first

came with my mother, wanting to pick hyacinth flowers from the mountain, and I was leading the way.

and from the moment I set eyes on you I have not been able to stop, not since then and not even now;

but you do not care — no, by Zeus, not at all.

I know, graceful girl, why it is you run from me:

because a shaggy eyebrow stretches right across my forehead from one ear to the other, one long one,

and a single eye sits underneath it, and a broad nose over my lip.

But, being the man I am, I graze a thousand head of cattle, and I milk and drink the best milk from them.

and cheese never fails me, not in summer nor in autumn,

nor at the very end of winter: my cheese-racks are always overloaded.

And I know how to pipe as no other Cyclops here can, singing of you, my sweet apple, and of myself together,

often at an untimely hour of the night. And I am rearing eleven fawns for you, all with collars, and four bear-cubs.

Come to me at last, and you will be none the worse off;

and let the grey-green sea go on roaring against the shore.

You will pass the night more pleasantly in the cave at my side.

There are laurels there, there are slender cypresses, there is dark ivy, there is the vine with its sweet fruit,

there is cold water, which many-treed Etna sends forth for me out of her white snow, a drink for the gods.

Who would choose to have the sea and its waves in preference to all this?

And if I myself seem to you too hairy,

I have oak logs, and under the ash an untiring fire;

and I would endure being burnt by you even in my very soul, and in my one eye, than which nothing is sweeter to me.

Alas that my mother did not bear me with gills,

so that I could have dived down to you and kissed your hand,

if you would not let me kiss your mouth. And I would have brought you either white lilies or a soft poppy with red petals;

but the one comes in summer, the other in winter,

so that I could not have brought you all these together at once.

Now, my little girl, now, this very moment, I shall learn to swim,

if some stranger sailing in a ship should arrive here,

so that I may find out what pleasure you people find in living in the deep.

Come out, Galateia, and once out forget to go home again, as I do sitting here;

and may you be willing to shepherd with me and to milk, and to set the cheese by putting in sharp rennet.

It is my mother alone who wrongs me, and I blame her:

she has never once said a kind word to you on my behalf,

and that although she sees me growing thinner day after day.

I shall tell her that my head and both my feet are throbbing, so that she may suffer, since I too am suffering.

Cyclops, Cyclops, where have your wits flown off to?

If you were to go and plait cheese-baskets, and cut greenery

and carry it to the lambs, you would very likely have a great deal more sense.

Milk the one that is there. Why chase the one that runs away? You will find another Galateia, perhaps a fairer one.

Many girls invite me to play with them through the night, and they all giggle whenever I answer them.

Clearly, on land at any rate, I too am somebody.

So it was that Polyphemus shepherded his love by making music, and he got through it more easily than if he had paid gold.