Book 1
1
A handsome lover, Galatea, this Sicilian shepherd who they say is so mad for you!
1
Don’t be sarcastic, Doris; he is Posidon’s son, after all.
1
Well, and if he were Zeus’s, and still such a wild shaggy creature, with only one eye (there is nothing uglier than to have only one eye), do you think his birth would improve his beauty?
1
Shagginess and wildness, as you call them, are not ugly in a man; and his eye looks very well in the middle of his forehead, and sees just as well as if it were two.
1
Why, my dear, from your raptures about him one would think it was you that were in love, not he.
2
Oh no, I am not in love; but it is too bad, your all running him down as you do. It is my belief you are jealous. Do you remember? we were playing on the shore at the foot of Etna, where the long strip of beach comes between the mountain and the sea; he was feeding his sheep, and spied us from above; yes, but he never so much as glanced at the rest of you; I was the pretty one; he was all eyes—eye, I mean— for me. That is what makes you spiteful, because it showed I was better than you, good enough to be loved, while you were taken no notice of.
2
Hoity-toity! jealous indeed! because a one-eyed shepherd thinks you pretty! Why, what could he see in you but your white skin? and he only cared for that because it reminded him of cheese and milk; he thinks everything pretty that is like them.
3
If you want to know any more than that about your looks, sit on a rock when it is calm, and lean over the water; just a bit of white skin, that is all; and who cares for that, if it is not picked out with some red?
3
Well, if I am all white, I have got a lover of some sort; there is not a-shepherd or a sailor or a boatman to care for any of you. Besides, Polyphemus is very musical.
