This was at least the Cyclops' case, until, Whether the boy beguiled the Child away, Or whether that limp Matron on the Hill Woke from her novel-reading trance, one day He waited long and wearily in vain,-- But, from that hour, they never came again.
Yet still he waited, hoping--wondering if They still might come, or dreaming that he heard The sound of far-off voices on the cliff, Or starting strangely when the she-goat stirred; But nothing broke the silence of the shore, And, from that hour, the Child returned no more.
Therefore our Cyclops sorrowed,--not as one Who can command the gamut of despair; But as a man who feels his days are done, So dead they seem,--so desolately bare; For, though he'd lived a hermit, 'twas but only Now he discovered that his life was lonely.
The very sea seemed altered, and the shore; The very voices of the air were dumb; Time was an emptiness that o'er and o'er Ticked with the dull pulsation "Will she come?" So that he sat "consuming in a dream," Much like his old forerunner, Polypheme.
Until there came the question, "Is she gone?" With such sad sick persistence that at last, Urged by the hungry thought which drove him on, Along the steep declivity he passed, And by the summit panting stood, and still, Just as the horn was sounding on the hill.
Then, in a dream, beside the "Dragon" door, The smith saw travellers standing in the sun; Then came the horn again, and three or four Looked idly at him from the roof, but One,-- A Child within,--suffused with sudden shame, Thrust forth a hand, and called to him by name.
Thus the coach vanished from his sight, but he Limped back with bitter pleasure in his pain; He was not all forgotten--could it be? And yet the knowledge made the memory vain; And then--he felt a pressure in his throat, So, for that night, forgot to milk his goat.
What then might come of silent misery, What new resolvings then might intervene, I know not. Only, with the morning sky, The goat stood tethered on the "Dragon" green, And those who, wondering, questioned thereupon, Found the hut empty,--for the man was gone.
"Sic visum Veneri: cui placet impares Formas atque animos sub juga aënea Saevo mittere cum joco." --Hor. i. 33.
"Love mocks us all"--as Horace said of old: From sheer perversity, that arch-offender Still yokes unequally the hot and cold, The short and tall, the hardened and the tender; He bids a Socrates espouse a scold, And makes a Hercules forget his gender:-- _Sic visum Veneri!_ Lest samples fail, I add a fresh one from the page of BAYLE.