“Onward we sailed with sorrowing hearts, and reached The country of the Cyclops, an untamed And lawless race, who, trusting to the gods, Plant not, nor plough the fields, but all things spring For them untended⁠—barley, wheat, and vines Yielding large clusters filled with wine, and nursed By showers from Jove. No laws have they; they hold No councils. On the mountain heights they dwell In vaulted caves, where each one rules his wives And children as he pleases; none give heed To what the others do. Before the port Of that Cyclopean land there is an isle, Low-lying, neither near nor yet remote⁠— A woodland region, where the wild goats breed Innumerable; for the foot of man Disturbs them not, and huntsmen toiling through Thick woods, or wandering over mountain heights, Enter not here. The fields are never grazed By sheep, nor furrowed by the plough, but lie Untilled, unsown, and uninhabited By man, and only feed the bleating goats. The Cyclops have no barques with crimson prows, Nor shipwrights skilled to frame a galley’s deck With benches for the rowers, and equipped For any service, voyaging by turns To all the cities, as is often done By men who cross the deep from place to place, And make a prosperous region of an isle. No meagre soil is there; it well might bear All fruits in their due time. Along the shore Of the gray deep are meadows smooth and moist. The vine would flourish long; the ploughman’s task Is easy, and the husbandman would reap Large harvests, for the mould is rich below. And there is a safe haven, where no need Of cable is; no anchor there is cast, Nor hawsers fastened to the strand, but they Who enter there remain until it please The mariners, with favorable wind, To put to sea again. A limpid stream Flows from a fount beneath a hollow rock Into that harbor at its further end, And poplars grow around it. Thither went Our fleet; some deity had guided us Through the dark night, for nothing had we seen. Thick was the gloom around our barques; the moon Shone not in heaven, the clouds had quenched her light. No eye discerned the isle, nor the long waves That rolled against the shore, till our good ships Touched land, and, disembarking there, we gave Ourselves to sleep upon the waterside And waited for the holy Morn to rise.