For love there is no other drug, Nicias,
it seems to me, neither unguent nor salve,
than the Muses. This remedy is delicate
and sweet for mortal men, but not easy to find.
You know this well, of course, as a doctor and one
whom the nine Muses love exceedingly well.
So at least the Cyclops, my countryman,
Polyphemus of old, got along quite well when he loved
Galatea and the down was just showing
on his temples and chin. He didn't woo her
with apples or roses or ringlets, but with sheer madness.
He counted everything else beside the point.
Often his sheep would come back to the fold themselves
from the green pastures while he, alone, would sing
from dawn of Galatea, wasting away
upon the shore where the seaweed lay. He had
beneath his heart a most angry wound, where
the mighty Cyprian goddess had fixed her shaft.
But he found the cure. He'd sit upon a cliff
and gaze out to sea while he sang songs like these:
O white Galatea, why do you spurn your lover?
Galatea -- whiter than curd to see, more tender
than the lamb, more skittish than the calf,
more glistening than the unripe grape. Why
do you come when sweet sleep embraces me
and go when sweet sleep releases me --
as the ewe goes when she glimpses the gray wolf?
I fell in love with you, girl, when first
you came with your mother to pick the hyacinths
that grow upon the hill and I showed you the path.
Once I'd seen you, I couldn't stop -- not then
or later or even now. But you don't care.
No, by Zeus, no, you don't care at all.
I know, my charming girl, why you shun me.
It's because a single shaggy eyebrow stretches
from ear to ear across my whole forehead.
There is just one eye beneath and the nose
is broad above my lip. But still, such
that I am, I tend a thousand head of cattle.
From them I draw and drink the best of milk.
I never lack for cheese, neither in summer
nor autumn nor in the worst of winter. My racks
are always weighted down. No other Cyclops
can pipe as I can, singing of me and you,
my darling sweet apple, many times
in the depths of night. I raise eleven fawns
with collars for you and four bear cubs.
Come to me and you'll have no less than these.
Leave the gray sea to gasp on the shore.
You'll sleep more sweetly here in my cave with me.
There are bays there and slender cypresses.
There is dark ivy and the vine with its sweet fruit.
There is cool water, which heavily wooded Aetna
sheds from her white snows, an ambrosial drink
for me. Who would choose the waves of the sea
rather than these? But if I myself seem
too shaggy to you, I have logs of oak and beneath
the ash an everlasting fire. With these
you may burn my soul and even my single eye --
for there is nothing sweeter than that to me.
O dear, I wish that my mother had borne me with gills --
I could have dived down to you and kissed
your hand if you won't allow me to kiss your mouth.
I'd have brought you white lilies or soft poppies
with petals of scarlet. But one grows in summer,
the other in winter. I couldn't have brought them both
together. Now, my girl, I'll learn straightway
at least to swim, if only some stranger would come,
sailing here in his ship, so that I could know
what pleasure you find to dwell there in the depths.
Come out, Galatea, and when you've come out,
forget, as I do, to go home again.
Shepherd with me and milk and set the cheese
with acid drops of rennet. My mother alone
does me wrong and I blame her. For never
once has she said a kind word for me
to you, though she sees that I grow thinner
day by day. I shall tell her that my head
throbs and my feet throb so that she may suffer --
since I suffer. O Cyclops, Cyclops, where
have your wits flown? You'd show much better sense
if you'd go out and weave crates for your cheese
and gather and bring fresh green shoots for your lambs.
Milk the ewe that's here. Why chase the one
that's gone? Perhaps you'll find another Galatea
lovelier than this. Many girls ask me
to play by night and giggle too when I listen.
It's obvious that on land I am someone.
So did the Cyclops shepherd his love with song
and fared better than if he'd spent gold.