would leave him--did I dare.

Yet for a little space it still endured,
Until, upon a day when least of all
The softened Cyclops, by his hopes assured,
Dreamed the inevitable blow could fall,
Came the stern moment that should all destroy,
Bringing a pert young cockerel of a Boy.

Middy, I think,--he'd "_Acis_" on his box:--
A black-eyed, sun-burnt, mischief-making imp,
Pet of the mess,--a Puck with curling locks,
Who straightway travestied the Cyclops' limp,
And marveled how his cousin so could care
For such a "one-eyed, melancholy Bear."

Thus there was war at once; not overt yet,
For still the Child, unwilling, would not break
The new acquaintanceship, nor quite forget
The pleasant past; while, for his treasure's sake,
The boding smith with clumsy efforts tried
To win the laughing scorner to his side.

There are some sights pathetic; none I know
More sad than this: to watch a slow-wrought mind
Humbling itself, for love, to come and go
Before some petty tyrant of its kind;
Saddest, ah!--saddest far,--when it can do
Naught to advance the end it has in view.

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,