"Medusa" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... made a miscalculation, when he thought that Mr. Fabian would fall into the hands of the Medusa within the bed-curtains. The very thought of the humiliation he had undergone, and the fear of what was yet in store for him, inspired Mr. Fabian with an unusual degree of courage or rather drove ...
— The Home in the Valley • Emilie F. Carlen
... sacrilege beyond report! For Rome still flays and sells him at the court, Where paths are closed to virtue's fair increase. Now were fit time for me to scrape a treasure! Seeing that work and gain are gone; while he Who wears the robe, is my Medusa still. God welcomes poverty perchance with pleasure: But of that better life what hope have we, When the blessed banner leads to ...
— Sonnets • Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella
... were off from the Sandwich Islands to the long swell of the Pacific, the slimy medusa lights covering the waters with a phosphorescent trail of fire all night, the rockweed and sea leek floating past by day telling their tale of some far land. Cook's secret commission had been very explicit: ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... with it is Girodet's ghastly "Deluge," and Gericault's dismal "Medusa." Gericault died, they say, for want of fame. He was a man who possessed a considerable fortune of his own; but pined because no one in his day would purchase his pictures, and so acknowledge his talent. At present, a scrawl ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... journey—the light pursuing and scattering the darkness; the glittering hero, borne by the mystic sandals of Hermes, bearing the sword of the sunlight, piercing the twilight or gloaming in the land of the mystic Graiae; slaying Medusa, the solemn star-lit night; destroying the dark dragon, and setting free Andromeda the dawn-maiden; and doing many wonders more. Or in Hermes we might trace out the Master Thief of Teutonic, and Scandinavian, and Hindu legends; or in Herakles, the type ...
— Fairy Tales; Their Origin and Meaning • John Thackray Bunce
... not good! Forbear! 'Tis lifeless, magical, a shape of air, An idol. Such to meet with, bodes no good; That rigid look of hers doth freeze man's blood, And well-nigh petrifies his heart to stone:— The story of Medusa thou hast known. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... sea; Bare at low water, and as still as death, But when the tide came gurgling o'er the surface, 'Twas like a resurrection of the dead: From graves innumerable, punctures fine In the close coral, capillary swarms Of reptiles, horrent as Medusa's snakes, Cover'd the bald-pate reef; then all was life, And indefatigable industry: The artisans were twisting to and fro. In idle-seeming convolutions; yet They never vanish'd with the ebbing surge, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 279, October 20, 1827 • Various
... sharks in Table Bay than sit down again with Ronald Kenna. In her room she lay exhausted and very still for a long time, with the feeling that she had escaped from a red-hot gridiron. She looked in her mirror on entering, expecting to see a vision of Medusa, hair hanging in streaks, eyes distraught, and deep ruts in the cheeks; but her face was charming and composed, and a fixed smile curved her mouth. She shuddered at her ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... Crinoids (though not exclusively confined to this period) is Pentacrinus (fig. 162). In this genus, the column is five-sided, with whorls of "side-arms;" and the arms are long, slender, and branched. The genus is represented at the present day by the beautiful "Medusa-head Pentacrinite" (Pentacrinus caput-medusoe). Another characteristic Oolitic genus is Apiocrinus, comprising the so-called "Pear Encrinites." In this group the column is long and rounded, with ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... which became men and women; Heraulos was changed into stone for offending Mercury; Pyrrhus for offending Rhea; Phineus, and Polydectes with his guests, for offending Perseus: under the petrifying glance of Medusa's head such transformations became ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... the love you bear me, you should find that there is anything else in my power wherein I can gratify you, provided it be not love itself, demand it of me; for I swear to you by that sweet absent enemy of mine to grant it this instant, though it be that you require of me a lock of Medusa's hair, which was all snakes, or even the very beams of the sun shut up ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... consternation as the features of Mr Bickers came to light, pale and stern. The sudden sight of Medusa's head could hardly have had a more petrifying effect. The victim himself was the first to recover. Stretching his arms and legs in relief, he sat up, and ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... naturally cannot pretend to say; but I can at least adduce the great analogy of the alternation of generations. If a 'Bipinnaria', a 'Brachialaria', a 'Pluteus', is competent to produce the Echinoderm, which is so widely different from it; if a hydroid polype can produce the higher Medusa; if the vermiform Trematode 'nurse' can develop within itself the very unlike 'Cercaria', it will not appear impossible that the egg, or ciliated embryo, of a sponge, for once, under special conditions, ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... correspondingly greater, for I have time on my hands to brood over it. I was hysterical as a woman yesterday afternoon—so hysterical that I came near upsetting one of the Furies who engaged me to row her down to Madame Medusa's villa last evening; and right at the sluice of the ...
— The Pursuit of the House-Boat • John Kendrick Bangs
... if the head of the Medusa, instead of turning into stone those who looked at it, had given them wings to escape they could not have flown away faster than did those poor savages at the sight ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... stand idle almost the year round, and might as well be let to appreciative strangers, who would accustom the rather washy and fierce frescoes on the walls to be stared at. I might have selected rooms, say on the court which looks on the exquisite bronze fountain, Perseus with the head of Medusa, a copy of the one in Florence by Benvenuto Cellini, where we could have a southern exposure. Or we might, so it would seem, have had rooms by the winter garden, where tropical plants rejoice in perennial summer, and blossom ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... sell my precious knowledge, bit by bit, to Madame Berthe," he ruminated. "Evidently the Louison dares not face this stony-faced Swiss Medusa. The felites histoires of Francois will fill up my mental notebook." Major Hawke then sat down at ease in the cafe of the Hotel National to indite a dispatch of spartan brevity to "Madame Louison" at the Hotel Faucon, Lausanne. "The Cook's Agency ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... frustrated this by dismissing the Duke, and degrading him at the same time. The Chief President is said to have been so frightened that he remained motionless, as if he had been petrified by a gaze at the head of Medusa. That celebrated personage of antiquity could not have been more a fury than Madame du Maine; she threatened dreadfully, and did not scruple to say, in the presence of her household, that she would yet find means to give the Regent such a blow as should make him bite the ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... gold, for which a wooden one is substituted, as is the round stock at the other extremity which was of silver; its lower side has a figure of Bellona, a terminus, &c., carved out of it; its upper, a sphynx, head of Medusa, leaves, and numerous other ornaments upon it; the sides are also beautifully carved, and two steel escutcheons on its sides before the bridge have engraved on them a trophy, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 538 - 17 Mar 1832 • Various
... them as the offspring of brains to be pitied for their diseased state, and contented myself with writing on them in large letters, before I returned to the post-boy, a Seen; which, like the head of Medusa, no doubt petrified ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... eyes that had seen appalling things. Sir Charles had remained in the churchyard by the grave, he had looked about him from one to the other of the mounds of turf, his imagination already stimulated had been quickened by what he had seen; he stood with the face of a Medusa. ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... in the earth, and came to the entrance of the city of King Pluto. The shades which sadly wandered back and forth before the gates of the city took flight as soon as they caught sight of flesh and blood in the form of a living man. Only the Gorgon Medusa and the spirit of Meleager remained. The former Hercules wished to overthrow with his sword, but Mercury touched him on the arm and told him that the souls of the departed were only empty shadow pictures and could not be wounded by ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... do I know? More than youre worth—more than I'm getting, because youre a ninetyday wonder, the guy who put the crap on the grass and sent it nuts. Less than he'd have given Minerva-Medusa. Come and get it straight ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... also bent forward. At that moment Robert caught sight beside his shoulder of an antique, standing on the mantelpiece, which was a new addition to the room. It was a head of Medusa, and the frightful stony calm of it struck on Elsmere's ruffled nerves with extraordinary force. It flashed across him that here was an apt symbol of that absorbing and overgrown life of the intellect which blights the heart ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Marcia turns straight around, with a resemblance to Medusa, since her short, uneven hair stands out every way with the vigorous use of her magnetic brush. "How could he have had ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... not time to feel a sensation of real fear, when cautiously her doorknob was turned and a head intruded itself which struck her as dumb as though Medusa had appeared, and drove the life-blood in a frozen ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... arouse mankind. Here, burnished bright for wrathful Pallas, shined, With serpent scales, and golden links firm bound, Her dreadful AEgis, and the snakes entwined; And on her breast, with severed neck, still frowned Medusa's head, and rolled ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... funnels of light. Astern, deep down, when there was a breeze, bubbled a procession of milky-turquoise ghosts—the foam flung down by the hull of the Snark each time she floundered against a sea. At night the wake was phosphorescent fire, where the medusa slime resented our passing bulk, while far down could be observed the unceasing flight of comets, with long, undulating, nebulous tails—caused by the passage of the bonitas through the resentful medusa slime. And now and again, from out of the darkness on either hand, ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... Chalicodoma of the Pebbles! She eats not a half, hardly a third of it. The rest remains as it was, untouched. We see here, in the destruction of the Mason's egg, a flagrant waste which aggravates the crime. Hunger excuses many things; for lack of food, the survivors on the raft of the Medusa indulged in a little cannibalism; but here there is enough food and to spare. When there is more than she needs, what earthly motive impels the Dioxys to destroy a rival in the germ stage? Why cannot she allow ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... the head of Medusa; that head of a woman once so beautiful, which Perseus cut off and which beholds in his hand, is only that of the virgin, whose head sinks below the horizon at the very moment that Perseus rises; and the serpents ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... the pale square of the window. And then, just when he was least expecting it, he saw the whole face, so close to him and so distinctly, that he started up on his elbow; and in the second or two it remained—a Medusa-face, opaquely white, with deep, unfathomable eyes—he recognised, with a shock, that his peace of mind was gone; that the sudden experience of a few hours back had given his life new meaning; that something had happened to him which ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... stock or polity of Siphonophora has a very definite united will and a united sensibility, and yet each of the individual persons of which this stock (or Cormus) is composed has its own personal will and its own particular sensations. Each of these persons indeed was originally a separate Medusa, and the individual Siphonophora stock originated, by association and division of labour, out of these ...
— Freedom in Science and Teaching. - from the German of Ernst Haeckel • Ernst Haeckel
... guessed that but for his own presence she would not have given it. The expression in her face changed rapidly from that which had been there when they had been alone, hardening very quickly until it reminded Orsino of a certain mask of the Medusa which had once made an impression upon his imagination. Her eyes were fixed and the pupils grew small while the singular golden yellow colour of the iris flashed disagreeably. She did not bend her head as she silently gave ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... decrees that Psyche shall be left upon a barren rock till a hideous monster shall come and devour her. And it is for this that men have paid her honours which were the portion only of the gods! Far better had she been born with the hair of Medusa and the hump ...
— The Red Romance Book • Various
... had exclaimed that he appeared ill before on his return, she was dumb now with sorrow at the change. For Paul had looked upon Medusa's head of horror, and, as well as his heart, his face seemed turned to stone. He was gentle with his mother, and let her caress him as much as she would, but nothing any one could say could move him—even Pike's ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... legend with that of the Gorgons and Graiae, who are the true clouds of thunderous ruin and tempest. I must, in passing, mark for you that the form of the sword or sickle of Perseus, with which he kills Medusa, is another image of the whirling harpy vortex, and belongs especially to the sword of destruction or annihilation; whence it is given to the two angels who gather for destruction the evil harvest and evil vintage of the earth (Rev. xiv. 15). I will collect afterwards and complete what I have ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... measure of their sacrifice. The heroes of mythology were but paltry figures compared with those who, in the great war, went forward to the roaring devils of modern gun-fire, dwelt amid high explosives more dreadful than dragons, breathed in the fumes of poison-gas more foul than the breath of Medusa, watched and slept above mine-craters which upheaved the hell-fire of Pluto, and defied thunderbolts more certain in death-dealing blows than ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... Hugo to share his home, at a time when his fortunes were at their lowest ebb. Many literary men were here at different times, generously cared for by the host, who called the retreat "the raft of Medusa." There were many pets also, especially dogs, as Victor Hugo almost shared the sentiment of Madame de Stael concerning these animals, "The more I know men, ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... On the summit or apex of the helmet was placed a sphinx, with griffins on either side. The figure of the goddess was represented in an erect martial attitude, and clothed in a robe reaching to the feet. On the breast was a head of Medusa, wrought in ivory, and a figure of Victory about four cubits high. The goddess held a spear in her hand, and an aegis lay at her feet, while on her right, and near the spear, was a figure of a serpent, believed ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... and "A Hero's Death." The centre piece is devoted to "The Victor," the great general, the master of the feast, the responsible and beflattered chief. In the last three stories, physical pain exposes its hideous countenance like that of Medusa mutilated. The two opening stories deal with mental pain. The hero of the centre piece sees neither the one nor the other; his glory is throned on both; he finds life good, and war even better. From the first page to the last, revolt mutters. But on the last page revolt culminates ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... reader in Berlin, the reader in Hamburg, and Amsterdam. He takes a sip of coffee, puffs at his cigar, and comfortably settles back to a taste of more details of the catastrophe, whether observed or fabricated. What a hurrah for the newspaper publishers! A sensation! More readers! That is the Medusa into whose eyes we look, and who tells us what the genuine value of a cargo of human ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... journey! You were attacked by suffocation. You had only time to call and wake me. I hastened to you. You gave me, in a dying voice, your last instructions. You delivered into my hands your last fifty florins, which were as acceptable as an orange would have been to the shipwrecked passengers of the Medusa. Then you pointed with your finger to a box, in which were inclosed family relics, letters, your journal, and papers. You said: 'Destroy all that; Poland is dead, let no one remember that I have lived!' After that you breathed your last. Well! I confess ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... She raised herself up slowly, stretching back her head. Her face was like the terrible tortured mask of the Medusa. She had but a moment in which to recover herself. Deliberately she spoke when her companion ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... Jelly-Fish disk, with its four tubes radiating from the central cavity. The proboscis, so characteristic of all Jelly-Fishes, hangs from the central opening; and the tentacles, coiled within the internal cavity up to this time, now make their appearance, and we have a complete little Medusa growing upon the Hydroid head. Gradually the point by which it is attached to the parent-stock narrows and becomes more and more contracted, till the animal drops off and swims ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... shield of Perseus, and is the head of Medusa thereupon? Truly, I have turned Monsieur du ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... the bed, and as he called to her I seemed to hear the eternal Orpheus calling for his lost Eurydice. Poor lad!—poor maid! Here, naked and terrible, was all the tragedy of the world compressed into an hour, the Medusa-face of life that turns the bravest to stone. Surely, I felt, God owed more than He could ever repay to these two lovers, whom it had been so easy to leave to their simple joys. And from that night to this I can never look upon my white bed without seeing afar off the moment ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne
... to escape as if I'd been a horned toad sealed in a cornerstone. Gruenwald, of course, treated me as though my breath was deadly, my touch foul, and my presence evil. In Gruenwald's eyes, the only difference between me and Medusa the Gorgon was that looking at me did not turn him to stone. He kept at least one eye ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... untaught folk-imagination, and so far richer in the quality of beauty than the mythology of the North. Even in the sawdust of a mythological dictionary the stories of Atalanta, Narcissus, Pygmalion, Orpheus and Eurydice, Phaethon, Medusa keep their magic. ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... come here for rest for me, which I have much needed; and shall remain here for about ten days more, and then home to work, which is my sole pleasure in life. I hope your splendid Medusa work and your experiments on pangenesis are going on well. I heard from my son Frank yesterday that he was feverish with a cold, and could not dine with the physiologists, which I am very sorry for, as I ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... his neck bristles with serpents. Ovid in his Metamorphoses, x. 21, makes Orpheus, looking for dear Eurydice in Tartarus, declare that he did not go down in order that he might chain the three necks, shaggy with serpents, of the monster begotten of Medusa. His business also is settled for all time; he is the terrible, fearless, and watchful janitor, or guardian (janitor or custos) of Orcus, the Styx, Lethe, or the black Kingdom.[9] And so he remains for modern poets, as when Dante, ...
— Cerberus, The Dog of Hades - The History of an Idea • Maurice Bloomfield
... elaborately pictorial. Poetry seems to have sought inspiration from painting, while painting, as we have said, inclined to genre, to luxurious representations of the amours of the gods or the adventures of heroes, with backgrounds of pastoral landscape. Shepherds fluted while Perseus slew Medusa. ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... Greyhound, Camelion, Dragon, Anson, Narcissus, Victorieuse, Weazle, Superb, Medusa, Thames, Cynthia, Delight, Triumph, Active, Maidstone, ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez. Vol II • Sir John Ross
... kings, who introduced not only the arts, but the religious rites of that ancient country. Among the regal descendants of Lynceus was Danae, whose son Perseus performed marvelous deeds, by the special favor of Athene, among which he brought from Libya the terrific head of the Gorgon Medusa, which had the marvelous property of turning every one to stone who looked at her. Stung with remorse for the accidental murder of his grandfather, the king, he retired from Argos, and founded the city of ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... nature had cast off her horrible night-mares, and I had once more started into identity, the anguish of the past day and night again seized me. Pains innumerable, and intolerable, rushed upon me. Each new thought was a new serpent. Mine was the head of Medusa: with this difference; my scorpions shed all ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... the interviews at Pozzuoli and at Naples, Cuthbert glanced at his father, and saw a purplish flush steal from neck to forehead, but the old man's eyes never quitted the floor. He seemed incapable of moving, Gorgonized by the beautiful Medusa whose invectives against him were ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... contempt, and told him that if he dared to repeat the insult I would shoot him on the spot. My wife also made him a speech in Arabic (not a word of which he understood), with a countenance as amiable as the head of a Medusa. Altogether, the mise en scene utterly astonished him, and he let us go, furnishing us with a guide named Rabongo to take us to M'wootan N'zige, not Luta N'zige, as Speke had erroneously suggested. In crossing the Kafoor River on a bridge of floating weeds, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... from [b] to [g] Andromedae, and is about 9[deg] from the latter. The most striking feature in Perseus is the so-called "segment of Perseus," a curve of stars beginning about 12[deg] below Cassiopeia, and curving toward Ursa Major. Note the famous variable Algol the Demon star. It represents the Medusa's head which Perseus holds in his hand. It varies from the second to the fourth magnitude in about three and one-half hours, and back again in the same time, after which it remains steadily brilliant for two and ...
— A Field Book of the Stars • William Tyler Olcott
... "sweetness wasted upon the desert air," but fell on one who knew how to appreciate it to its fullest extent. Merton stood stock-still, and gazed upon him with mute admiration. He was positively fascinated. The nose operated upon him like the head of Medusa, and almost turned him to stone. And Mr. Hookey was fascinated too. Merton also had become Medusafied, and exercised a petrifactive influence upon the barber. He was nailed fast to the threshold of his own door, and gazed ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 565 - Vol. 20, No. 565., Saturday, September 8, 1832 • Various
... came by that extraordinary name though, is not I believe well known; perhaps her likeness to one of the Cape Verd islands, the original Hesperides, might be the cause; for it was there the daughters of Phorcus fixed their habitation: or may be, as Medusa was called Gorgon par eminence, because she applied herself to the enriching of ground, this fertile islet owes its appellation from being particularly manured ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... to be a young man, the king urged him to go in search of adventures, and set him the task of bringing him the head of the terrible Gorgon named Medusa. Perseus asked the aid of the gods for this expedition, which he felt obliged to make, and in answer to his prayers, Mercury and Minerva, the patrons of adventurers, led him to the abode of the Graeae, the woman-monsters, so called because they had been born with ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 • Various
... of the Resurrection," with its glad, triumphant assertion of the power of the immortal life; the poetry and sacredness of maternity as typified in the "Mother of Moses;" the statues of the "Galatea" and the "Medusa," and other ideal creations, indicate "the vision and the faculty divine" of Mr. Simmons. To a very great degree his art is that which the French describe as the grand manner, and to this is added a spiritual quality, ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... me so well beloved, is that abstracted Platonism. But verily the fear of imagination would far outbalance any love of it, if crime had peopled for a man that viewless world with spectres, and the Medusa-head of Justice were shaking her snakes in his face. And, by way of a parergon observation, how terrible, most terrible, to the guilty soul must be the solitary silent system now so popular among those cold legislative schemers, who have ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... each—Basque, Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese, Danish, and Swedish; two German; one Lithuanian; and a Russian variant. There must be many more in Bolte's notes to Grimm, 60. These are sufficient to prove that the whole concatenation of incident is European, though it is difficult to understand how the Medusa incident got tacked on to the preceding three, with which it is very loosely combined, the only point of connection being with the Life Token. Strangely enough, in the ancient form of the folk-tale, the Gorgon is an almost essential part ...
— Europa's Fairy Book • Joseph Jacobs
... solemn procession round the orchestra, with hymns of blessing, while the terrible Chorus of the Furies, clothed in black, with blood-stained girdles, and serpents in their hair, in masks having perhaps somewhat of the terrific beauty of Medusa-masks, are convoyed to their new sanctuary by a procession of children, women, and old men in purple robes and torches in their hands, after Athene and the Furies have sung, in response to each other, a chorus from which I must beg leave to give you ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley
... shallow. Mopsa is love's best medicine, True water to a lover's wine. Nay, she's the yellow antidote, Both bred and born to cut Love's throat: Be but my second, and stand by, Mopsa, and I'll them both defy; And all else of those gallant races, Who wear infection in their faces; For thy face (that Medusa's shield!) Will bring me safe ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... cast on the isle of Seriphos, where a fisherman named Dictys took care of them. A cruel tyrant named Polydectes wanted Danae to be his wife, and, as she would not consent, he shut her up in prison, saying that she should never come out till her son Perseus had brought him the head of the Gorgon Medusa, thinking he must be lost by the way. For the Gorgons were three terrible sisters, who lived in the far west beyond the setting sun. Two of them were immortal, and had dragon's wings and brazen claws and serpent hair, but their sister Medusa was mortal, and ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge
... this discovery was the fact that the left hand was perfect, and did not hold a bow, but some soft, elastic substance which Stephani believes to be the aegis, or shield, of Jupiter, on which was the head of Medusa. The sight of this shield paralyzed those who saw it; and though it belonged to Jupiter and Minerva, Jupiter sometimes lent it to his son Apollo to aid him in his warfare; such instances are recorded by Homer. After Stephani had told his idea of it, the German scholar Ludwig ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement
... contrasted with the inorganic world, are in other respects less contrasted than inferior organisms. As a class, mammals are higher than birds; and yet they are of lower temperature, and have smaller powers of locomotion. The stationary oyster is of higher organization than the free-swimming medusa; and the cold-blooded and less heterogeneous fish is quicker in its movements than the warm-blooded and more heterogeneous sloth. But the admission that the several aspects under which this increasing contrast shows itself bear variable ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... observed that they often give the seas in which they abound the appearance of being crowded with flakes of half-melted snow. The larger kinds, when undisturbed in their native haunts, attain to considerable size. A faintly blue medusa, nearly a foot across, may be seen in the Gulf of Manaar, where, no doubt, others of still larger growth are to ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... glory of Aunt Mary's get-up. The brain measurements of him who had bought the cap being to its present wearer's as five is to three, the effect of its proportions, in addition to the goggles and the ear-trumpet, was such as to have overawed a survivor of Medusa's stare. ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner
... 'if Medusa had but one eye, and this dear creature two, I should die as miserably as the lady who loved the Apollo Belvidere. I have had oceans of knights errant—but such! I think of writing ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... other assumed so many deceptive shapes to those who visited his cave, that his memory has been preserved in the word Protean. Such fancies well apply to a part of Nature which shifts like the sands, and ranges from the hideous Cuttle-fish and ravenous Shark to the delicate Medusa, whose graceful form and trailing tentacles float among the waving fronds of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... to every one that served, eight drachmas, which was a great help to the manning of the fleet; but Clidemus ascribes this also to the art of Themistocles. When the Athenians were on their way down to the haven of Piraeus, the shield with the head of Medusa was missing; and he, under the pretext of searching for it, ransacked all places, and found among their goods considerable sums of money concealed, which he applied to the public use; and with this the soldiers and seamen were well ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... into stone!" he exclaimed. "She is a regular Gorgon, with those heavy eyes of hers. I never saw such eyes. I believe she would petrify me if I had to bear them. Don't you give Medusa one of those sweet almonds, Daisy—not one, do ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... knew no better; and that this excuse alone could save him. My wife, naturally indignant, had risen from her seat, and maddened with the excitement of the moment, she made a little speech in Arabic (not a word of which he understood) with a countenance almost as amiable as the head of Medusa. Altogether the mise-en-scene utterly astonished him. The woman, Bacheta, although savage, had appropriated the insult to her mistress, and she also fearlessly let fly at him, translating as nearly as she could the complimentary address ...
— Noble Deeds of the World's Heroines • Henry Charles Moore
... little hills and valleys, offering a variety of stations for the growth of these animal forests. In and out among them, moved numbers of blue and red and yellow fishes, spotted and banded and striped in the most striking manner, while great orange or rosy transparent medusa floated along near the surface. It was a sight to gaze at for hours, and no description can do justice to its surpassing beauty and interest. For once, the reality exceeded the most glowing accounts I had ever read of the wonders of a coral sea. There is perhaps no spot in the world ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... to me, "but I think that they are excellent. A twenty dollar note used to last me but a week, but now it is as good as Fortunatus's purse, which was never empty. I eat my dinner at the hotel, and show them my twenty dollar note. The landlord turns away from it, as if it were the head of Medusa, and begs that I will pay another time. I buy every thing that I want, and I have only to offer my twenty dollar note in payment, and my credit is unbounded—that is, for any sum under twenty dollars. If they ever do give ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... have been not to be warmed by his eloquent words and tender sympathy; and how he also being most unhappy we were well fitted to be a mutual consolation to each other, if I had not been hardened to stone by the Medusa head of Misery. The misfortunes of Woodville were not of the hearts core like mine; his was a natural grief, not to destroy but to purify the heart and from which he might, when its shadow had passed from over him, shine forth brighter and ...
— Mathilda • Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
... Florence, resided at Poggio Cajano, a place ten miles from Florence. I there waited upon him to pay my respects, and he and his duchess received me with the greatest kindness. At the duke's request I undertook to make a great statue of Perseus delivering Andromeda from the Medusa. A site was found for me to erect a house in which I might set up my furnaces, and carry on a variety of works both of clay and bronze, and of gold and silver separately. While making progress with my great statue of Perseus, I executed my ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... by Lady Charlotte Elliot (from "Medusa" and other poems). Music by Robert B. Addison.—A very poetical setting of ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 355, October 16, 1886 • Various
... you are as brave a youth as I believe you to be," replied King Polydectes, with the utmost graciousness of manner. "The bridal gift which I have set my heart on presenting to the beautiful Hippodamia is the head of the Gorgon Medusa, with the snaky locks; and I depend on you, my dear Perseus, to bring it to me. So, as I am anxious to settle affairs with the princess, the sooner you go in quest of the Gorgon, the better I ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... dire, and airy tongues that syllable men's names on sands, and shores, and desert wildernesses," until not one of the party, excepting myself, dared move or look round for fear of seeing some dread presence, some shapeless dweller upon the threshold, some horrible apparition, the sight of which, Medusa-like, should blast them into stone. Not infrequently the situation was rendered additionally harrowing by the cook, who would suddenly interrupt the narrative, send an icy thrill down our spines, and cause the ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... horrible to know too much; there was always blood in the foundations. Parents "kept things" from children—protected them from all the dark secrets of pain and evil. And was any life livable unless it were thus protected? Could any one look in the Medusa's ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... be glad to see Oliver: I hope he will keep his tongue quiet, about the tea-kettle; for, I shall not give it till I leave the Medusa. ...
— The Letters of Lord Nelson to Lady Hamilton, Vol. I. - With A Supplement Of Interesting Letters By Distinguished Characters • Horatio Nelson
... the aegis and spear. Athena, whose aegis was a scaly cloak or mantle bordered with serpents and bearing Medusa's head. ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... all their dark brightness. And the cheek was never dimpled with smiles now. It was the same rounded, pouting, childish prettiness, but with all love and belief in love departed from it—the sadder for its beauty, like that wondrous Medusa-face, with ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... my horse 'Perseus,'" said the doctor, "in honor of the illustrious slayer of the Gorgon Medusa, and ...
— Eric - or, Under the Sea • Mrs. S. B. C. Samuels
... Ruskin the "'Queen of the Air,' in the heavens, in the earth, and in the heart"; is said to have been the conception of Metis, to have issued full-armed from the brain of Zeus, and in this way the child of both wisdom and power; wears a helmet, and bears on her left arm the aegis with the Medusa's head; the olive among trees, and the owl among animals, ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... out of the shadows in the little stairway, and as if it had been Medusa's, it froze the words ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... once more. "There, there, my dear lad," said he; "you must not excite yourself. You are trembling all over. Your nerves cannot stand it. We must take these great questions upon trust. What are we, after all? Half-evolved creatures in a transition stage, nearer perhaps to the Medusa on the one side than to perfected humanity on the other. With half a complete brain we can't expect to understand the whole of a complete fact, can we, now? It is all very dim and dark, no doubt; but I think ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... before the Medusa-ruin Scott, who is again at his tricks, and refuses officers to volunteers. To carry through in Washington any sensible scheme, more boldness is needed than on ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... torpedoes and sinks Italian submarine Medusa, this being the first instance on record of the sinking of one undersea boat by another; German Admiralty announces the loss of the submarine U-14, her crew being captured by the British; Athens reports that a British submarine has torpedoed and sunk three Turkish transports, loaded with ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... imagination. Truly, the Crystal Palace, in all its departments, offers wonderful means of education. I marvel what will come of it. Among the things that I admired most was Benvenuto Cellini's statue of Perseus holding the head of Medusa, and standing over her headless and still writhing body, out of which, at the severed neck, gushed a vast exuberance of snakes. Likewise, a sitting statue, by Michel Angelo, of one of the Medici, full of dignity and grace and reposeful ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... came hack from Viceregal Lodge in the mists of the evening, they met a temporarily insane woman, on a temporarily mad horse, swinging round the corners, with her eyes and her mouth open, and her head like the head of the Medusa. She was stopped by a man at the risk of his life, and taken out of the saddle, a limp heap, and put on the bank to explain herself. This wasted twenty minutes, and then she was sent home in a lady's 'rickshaw, ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... are as brave a youth as I believe you to be," replied King Polydectes, with the utmost graciousness of manner. "The bridal gift which I have set my heart on presenting to the beautiful Hippodamia is the head of the Gorgon Medusa with the snaky locks; and I depend on you, my dear Perseus, to bring it to me. So, as I am anxious to settle affairs with the princess, the sooner you go in quest of the Gorgon, the better ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... abruptly and stared at her with the expression of one who is suddenly confronted by some Medusa's head, as if in the straggling wisps of hair that escaped from beneath her hat he saw the writhing serpents. She was going to marry ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... was, she might have been the head of the Medusa, for Dr. Brunton felt suddenly as if turned to stone. When he went into his house all chance of an hour's sleep was gone. He met his sister in the passage: she stopped and said, "Oh, James, you must have passed the Ladies Moor as you came home: did ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... her; and by Cupid The young Medusa made me stupid! A face, that hath no lovers slain, Wants forces, and is near disdain. For every fop will freely peep At majesty that is asleep. But she—fair tyrant!—hates to be Gaz'd on with such impunity. Whose prudent rigour bravely bears And scorns the trick of ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... thence have evil drawn: It is a magic shape, a lifeless eidolon. Such to encounter is not good: Their blank, set stare benumbs the human blood, And one is almost turned to stone. Medusa's ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... a great deal of raw spirit, to take the taste out of your mouth. And my 'Medusa' is to hang for the future in Mr. Mosenthal's dining-room! Will he understand ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... lectures the insensible gradations existing between polyps, medusae, and echinoderms, and to designate by the same name organs seemingly so different. Especially has the minute examination of the thickness of the test in echinoderms revealed to me unexpected relations between the sea-urchin and the medusa. No one suspects, I fancy, at this moment, that the solid envelope of the Scutellae and the Clypeasters is traversed by a net-work of radiating tubes, corresponding to those of the medusae, so well presented by Ehrenberg in Aurelia aurita. If the Berlin zoologists ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... How, through each glade, her soft and hallowing ray Stole like a maiden tiptoe, o'er the ground, Till every tiny blade of glittering grass Was doubled by its shadow. Can it be, That evil hearts throb near a scene like this? And yet how soon comes the Medusa, Thought, To chill the heart's blood of sweet fantasy! For, O bright orb! That glid'st along the fringe of those tall trees, Where a child's thought might grasp thee, Art thou not This night in thousand places ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards
... aspect. Some of the men in the prime of life are grand and haughty, with the cast-bronze countenance of Roman emperors. But the old men bear rigid faces of carved basalt, gazing fixedly before them as though at some time or other in their past lives they had met Medusa: and truly Etna in eruption is a Gorgon, which their ancestors have oftentimes seen shuddering, and fled from terror-frozen. The white-haired old women, plying their spindle or distaff, or meditating in grim solitude, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... well. Up a stark cliff we went, then crossed the web Just as the red moon bloomed upon the hills And silvered all the Panticapean vale. The funnel of the web was in the mouth Of a vast tomb, whose outside, hewn on rock, Outlined a Gorgon's face with jaws agape— Some stern Medusa, Stheno, or Euryale, Changed to the stone that in the elder days She changed the sons of men who looked on her. We passed the funnel, entering the tomb. About my arms the spider threw his cords, And shackled them. I dared not move, but lay Upon the smooth ...
— Stories in Verse • Henry Abbey
... to these regions, now that invalids have learnt the drawbacks of their climate? Decayed Muscovites, Englishmen such as you will vainly seek in England, and their painted women-folk with stony, Medusa-like gambling eyes, a Turk or two, Jews and cosmopolitan sharks and sharpers, flamboyant Americans, Brazilian, Peruvian, Chilian, Bolivian rastaqueros with names that read like a nightmare (see "List of Arrivals" in New York Herald)—the whole ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... Tribunate have resulted in scandal, the least thing that the Senate can do is to remove the twenty and the sixty bad members, and replace them by well-disposed persons. The will of the nation is that the government may not be hindered from doing well, and that the head of Medusa may no longer be displayed in our Tribunes and in our Assemblies. The conduct of Sieyes in this circumstance proves perfectly that, after having concurred in the destruction of all the constitutions since 1791, he still wishes to try his hand against this one. It is very extraordinary that he does ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... the Byzantine era and in Islam as soon as it recovered from the first shocks of its formation. Procopius (died ca. 535) describes a monumental water clock which was erected in Gaza ca. 500.[17] It contained impressive jackwork, such as a Medusa head which rolled its eyes every hour on the hour, exhibiting the time through lighted apertures and showing mythological interpretations of the cosmos. All these effects were produced by Heronic techniques, ...
— On the Origin of Clockwork, Perpetual Motion Devices, and the Compass • Derek J. de Solla Price
... magnifying glass was enabled distinctly to discern the moluscae. When magnified, they appeared about the size of a pin's head, of a yellowish brown colour, rather oval-shaped, and having tentaculae. The medusa is a genus of molusca; and I think M. le Seur told me he reckons forty-three or forty-four ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... in large numbers, and of most varied devices, all showing the influence of classical art. A head (probably his own portrait) is often on the obverse, and on the reverse Apollo playing the lyre, or a Centaur, or a Victory, or Medusa, or Pegasus, or Hercules. Other types show a warrior on horse or foot, or a lion,[114] or a bull, or a wolf, or a wild boar; others again a vine-leaf, or an ear of bearded wheat. On a very few is found the horse, surviving from the old Macedonian ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare
... to-day, too, do they not proclaim the tombola where once they announced a victory? Even now, in spite of forgotten greatness, it is still a garden of statues. Looking ever over the Piazza stands the Perseus of Cellini, with the head of Medusa held up to the multitude, the sword still gripped in his hand. It is the masterpiece of one who, like all the greatest artists of the Renaissance—Giotto, Orcagna, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael—did not confine himself to one art, but practised ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... up of classical myths. The subjects are: The Story of Midas, with his Golden Touch, Pandora's Box, The Adventure of Hercules in quest of the Golden Apples, Bellerophon and the Chimera, Baucis and Philemon, Perseus and Medusa; these, I think, will be enough to make up a volume. As a framework, I shall have a young college student telling these stories to his cousins and brothers and sisters, during his vacations, sometimes at the fireside, sometimes in the woods and dells. Unless I greatly mistake, these old ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields |
