Poem: On Coming Home

The Cyclops were a gigantic and lawless race of shepherds with one large circular eye in the middle of their foreheads. They also devoured humans. Ulysses and some of his crew became trapped inside the cave of one Cyclops, who gradually began to eat the men. Ulysses and his surviving crew blinded the Cyclops by driving a stake into its eye while it slept. The Cyclops was the son of the sea god Poseidon (Roman Neptune), and he prayed to his father that Ulysses might reach home late or never at all. Aided by the Phaeacians, Ulysses reached home safely. Poseidon complained to Zeus (Roman Jupiter) about this disrespect of the mortals saying he would have let Ulysses get home eventually, "when he had suffered sufficiently."

ON COMING HOME
(The Sojourner's Lament)

The poem "On Coming Home" appeared in this column