Medusa

How did Medusa do her hair?
The question fills me with despair.
It must have caused her sore distress
That head of curling snakes to dress.
Whenever after endless toil
She coaxed it finally to coil,
The music of a Passing Band
Would cause each separate hair to stand
On end and sway and writhe and spit,--
She couldn't "do a thing with it."
And, being woman and aware
Of such disaster to her hair,
What could she do but petrify
All whom she met, with freezing eye?

Oliver Herford

Oliver Herford was born in England on December 2, 1860. He was a British-born American writer, artist, and illustrator, often referred to as 'The American Oscar Wilde' for his sharp wit and humorous works. Herford authored and illustrated many books for children and adults, contributing to magazines such as "The Criterion", "Life", and "Punch". He died on July 5, 1935, in France.

Oliver Herford

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English

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Her Hair

The beauty of her hair bewilders me -
Pouring adown the brow, its cloven tide
Swirling about the ears on either side
And storming round the neck tumultuously:
Or like the lights of old antiquity
Through mullioned windows, in cathedrals wide
Spilled moltenly o'er figures deified
In chastest marble, nude of drapery.
And so I love it. Either unconfined;
Or plaited in close braidings manifold;
Or smoothly drawn; or indolently twined
In careless knots whose coilings come unrolled
At any lightest kiss; or by the wind
Whipped out in flossy ravellings of gold.

James Whitcomb Riley

The Hydra

The Hydra Hercules defied,
Its nine diminished heads must hide
Before the baneful modern beast
Who has a thousand heads at least.
See how in horrid tiers they rise,
With straining ears and bulging eyes,
While, blinded by fierce calcium rays,
The trembling victim tribute pays
Of song or measure, mime or jest,
To soothe the savage Hydra's breast.
If she please not the monster's whim,
Wild scribes will tear her limb from limb;
Even if charmed, he rend the air
With hideous joy, let her beware;
For she must surely, soon or late,
Fall 'neath the hissing Hydra's hate.

Oliver Herford

On The Medusa Of Leonardo Da Vinci In The Florentine Gallery.

1.
It lieth, gazing on the midnight sky,
Upon the cloudy mountain-peak supine;
Below, far lands are seen tremblingly;
Its horror and its beauty are divine.
Upon its lips and eyelids seems to lie
Loveliness like a shadow, from which shine,
Fiery and lurid, struggling underneath,
The agonies of anguish and of death.

2.
Yet it is less the horror than the grace
Which turns the gazer's spirit into stone,
Whereon the lineaments of that dead face
Are graven, till the characters be grown
Into itself, and thought no more can trace;
'Tis the melodious hue of beauty thrown
Athwart the darkness and the glare of pain,
Which humanize and harmonize the strain.

3.
And from its head as from one body grow,
As ... grass out of a watery rock,
...

Percy Bysshe Shelley

The Rape of the Lock (Canto 4)

But anxious cares the pensive nymph oppress'd,
And secret passions labour'd in her breast.
Not youthful kings in battle seiz'd alive,
Not scornful virgins who their charms survive,
Not ardent lovers robb'd of all their bliss,
Not ancient ladies when refus'd a kiss,
Not tyrants fierce that unrepenting die,
Not Cynthia when her manteau's pinn'd awry,
E'er felt such rage, resentment, and despair,
As thou, sad virgin! for thy ravish'd hair.

For, that sad moment, when the Sylphs withdrew,
And Ariel weeping from Belinda flew,
Umbriel, a dusky, melancholy sprite,
As ever sullied the fair face of light,
Down to the central earth, his proper scene,
Repair'd to search the gloomy cave of Spleen.

Swift on his sooty pinions flits the Gnome,
And in a vapour...

Alexander Pope

Medusa

    As drear and barren as the glooms of Death,
    It lies, a windless land of livid dawns,
    Nude to a desolate firmament, with hills
    That seem the fleshless earth's outjutting ribs,
    And plains whose face is crossed and rivelled deep
    With gullies twisting like a serpent's track.
    The leprous touch of Death is on its stones,
    Where for his token visible, the Head
    Is throned upon a heap of monstrous rocks,
    Grotesque in everlasting ugliness,
    Within a hill-ravine, that splits athwart
    Like some old, hideous and unhealing scar.
    Her lethal beauty crowned with twining snakes
    That mingle with her hair, the Gorgon reigns.
    Her eyes are clouds wherein Death's lightnings lurk,
    Yet, even as men that seek the glance of Life,

Clark Ashton Smith

Andromeda

Now Time's Andromeda on this rock rude,
With not her either beauty's equal or
Her injury's, looks off by both horns of shore,
Her flower, her piece of being, doomed dragon's food.
Time past she has been attempted and pursued
By many blows and banes; but now hears roar
A wilder beast from West than all were, more
Rife in her wrongs, more lawless, and more lewd.

Her Perseus linger and leave her tó her extremes? -
Pillowy air he treads a time and hangs
His thoughts on her, forsaken that she seems,
All while her patience, morselled into pangs,
Mounts; then to alight disarming, no one dreams,
With Gorgon's gear and barebill, thongs and fangs.

Gerard Manley Hopkins