Sometimes the Gorgon's head was on her breast-plate, with living serpents
writhing round it, as well as on her shield and helmet.
It was in one of her temples that the following occurrence took place, from
which she adopted this device.
Medusa was the only one of the Gorgons who was subject to mortality, and
was celebrated for her personal charms; particularly for the beauty of her
hair. Neptune became enamoured of her
Medusa once had charms, to gain her love
A rival crowd of envious lovers strove.
They who have seen her, own they ne'er did trace,
More moving features, in a sweeter face:
Yet above all, her length of hair they own,
In golden ringlets waved, and graceful shone.
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Her, Neptune saw: and with such beauties fired,
Resolved to compass what his soul desired.
The bashful goddess turned her eyes away,
Nor durst such bold impurity survey."
This violation of the sanctity of her temple provoked Minerva, and she
changed the beautiful locks of Medusa, which had inspired the love of
Neptune, into ghastly and living serpents, as a punishment for the
desecration of that sanctuary, where only worship and incense should have
been offered.
[Illustration]
"It lieth, gazing on the midnight sky,
Upon the cloudy mountain peak supine;
Below, the 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.
"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.
"And from its head as from one body grow,
As grass out of a watery rock,
Hairs which are vipers, and they curl and flow,
And their long tangles in each other lock:
And with unending involutions show,
Their mailed radiance as it were to mock,
The torture and the death within, and saw
The solid air with many a ragged jaw,
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"'Tis the tempestuous loveliness of terror;
For from the serpents gleam a brazen glare,
Kindled by that inextricable error,
Which makes a thrilling vapour of the air
Become a strange, and ever shifting mirror
Of all the beauty, and the terror there--
A woman's countenance, with serpent locks,
Gazing in death on heaven, from those evil rocks."