The Cyclops are described differently by different authors. Homer speaks of them as a gigantic and lawless race of shepherds who dwelt in Sicily. Each of them had a single eye in the center of his forehead. The chief of the Cyclops was Polyphemus who fell in love with the Nereid Galatea. He took great care of his appearance, harrowed his coarse hair with a currycomb and mowed his beard with a sickle. When he looked into the sea, he smiled complacently and said: "Beautiful seems my beard, beautiful also my one eye--as I count beauty--and the sea reflects the gleam of my teeth whiter than Parian Stone" (Theocritus, Idyll VI.) Galatea did not return the Cyclops's affection, however, for she loved the river god Acis. Polyphemus came upon the lovers one day in the woods, and was so enraged at the sight of them that he killed his rival with a rock. As the blood of Acis crept in a stream from under the rock it grew paler and paler until it turned into water. Soon it became a river which still bears the name of the unfortunate Acis.
Milton alludes to the ocean deities in the song at the conclusion of "Comus."
"Sabrina fair ... Listen and appear to us, In name of great Oceanus, By the earth-shaking Neptune's mace, And Tethy's grave majestic pace; By hoary Nereus' wrinkled look, And the Carpathian wizard's hook, By scaly Triton's winding shell, And old soothsaying Glaucus' spell, By Leucothea's lovely hands, And her son that rules the strands; By Thetis' tinsel-slippered feet, And the song of Sirens sweet;" etc.
Proteus is called the Carpathian wizard because his cave was on the island of Pharos, or Carpathos.
Wordsworth's sympathy with the classical conception of nature is shown in the following sonnet:--
"The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers; Little we see in Nature that is ours; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! This sea that bares her bosom to the moon; The winds that will be howling at all hours, And are upgathered now like sleeping flowers; For this, for everything, we are out of tune; It moves us not. Great God! I'd rather be A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn; So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn, Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea; Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn."