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Monday, April 4, 2011

A-Z: Cyclops

The land of Cyclops first, a savage kind,
Nor tamed by manners, nor by laws confined:
Untaught to plant, to turn the glebe, and sow,
They all their products to free nature owe:
The soil, untill'd, a ready harvest yields,
With wheat and barley wave the golden fields;
Spontaneous wines from weighty clusters pour,
And Jove descends in each prolific shower,
By these no statues and no rights are known,
No council held, no monarch fills the throne;
But high on hills, or airy cliffs, they dwell,
Or deep in caves whose entrance leads to hell.
Each rules his race, his neighbour not his care,
Heedless of others, to his own severe.

–– Homer, The Odyssey, Book IX (Translated by Alexander Pope)

(The complete text can be found at Wikisource)

2 comments:

  1. Wow, I like your Challenge entries! I look forward to reading the rest of your posts!

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  2. I wish I'd learned about this challenge earlier. Sometimes, you end up with incredible stuff from a limitation in the structure of your writing, like what happens with poetry.

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