"Medusa" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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, just under ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... 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 larva, her mess-mate, to take advantage of the remains and ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... has resided in Rome, where she was a pupil of Gibson. Two heads, "Daphne" and "Medusa," executed soon after she went to Rome, were praised by critics of authority. "Will-o'-the-Wisp," "Puck," "Sleeping Faun," "Waking Faun," and "Zenobia in Chains" followed each ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... courser.—Pegasus, a winged horse which sprang from the blood of Medusa when Perseus cut off her head. As soon as born he left the earth and flew up to heaven, or, according to Ovid, took up his abode on Mount Helicon, and was always associated ...
— An Essay on Criticism • Alexander Pope
... I seen their like. The dark eyes of Karamaneh were wonderful and beautiful, the eyes of Dr. Fu-Manchu sinister and wholly unforgettable; but the eyes of this woman were incredible. Their glance was all but insupportable; the were the eyes of a Medusa! ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... antagonistic influences; hence her name Pallas, from pallo, I swing. In the centre of this shield, which was covered with dragon's scales, bordered with serpents, and which she sometimes wore as a breastplate, was the awe-inspiring head of the Medusa, which had the effect of turning ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... 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
... evident reluctance, and Orsino 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 ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... know it, and you're lost in a minute. Besides, it's filled with strange and terrible creatures, Robin Hood—that's me, though I have some redeeming qualities—the Erymanthean boar, the Hydra-headed monster, Medusa of the snaky locks, Cyclops, Polyphemus with one awful eye, the deceitful Sirens, the Old Man of the Mountain, Wodin and Osiris, and, last and most terrible of all, the ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the law: but I considered 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 more ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... ago, she had reverently packed the pipe away, with other articles belonging to the dead, and ignorant that her mother had given it to Bertie, she deemed it safe in that sacred repository. Now, like the face of Medusa it glared at her, and that which her father's lips had sanctified, became the polluted medium of a retributive curse upon his devoted child. So the Diabolus ex machina, the evil genius of each human life decrees that the most cruel cureless pangs are ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... apartment of Francois'. Francois did the honours with the activity of a man who is not ashamed of his establishment. His room is comfortably furnished; two modern pendules mounted on bronze, a wardrobe with a Medusa's head, a high bed, and a handsome rose-coloured curtain. If the room was not overburdened with furniture, if there was not much of luxury, yet, to those not early accustomed to superfluities, it might even seem gay. It represented the tastes, opinions, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 549 (Supplementary issue) • Various
... 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 ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley
... room 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 from his pencil brings ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... he would slay his grandfather. Perseus, like Tammuz and Osiris, was enclosed in a chest which was cast into the sea, to be rescued, however, by a fisherman on the island of Seriphos. This hero afterwards slew Medusa, one of the three terrible sisters, the Gorgons—a demon group which links with Tiamat. In time, Perseus returned home, and while an athletic contest was in progress, he killed his grandfather with a quoit. There is no evidence, however, to ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... of July, at night, Lord Nelson arrived in the Downs, and immediately hoisted his flag on board the Leyden of sixty-four guns; but shifted it, two days after, to the Medusa frigate of thirty-two. Not a moment was now lost in making every preparation for a formidable attack on the French flotilla, by the assistance of which we were menaced with the invasion of the myriads of troops that lined the shore of the enemy from Brest to the Texel. ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison
... microscope, through which he examined one of the stomachs of the medusae. It was found to be full of diatoms, which are flinty-shelled microscopic animals of every variety of shape, such as stars, crosses, semicircles, and spirals—yet soft as are the jelly-fish, they can consume them. This one medusa had in its stomach no less than seven hundred thousand diatoms, so that it would be rather difficult to compute how many the whole shoal consumed for their dinner—they in their turn having to be eaten by the ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... 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 ...
— Noble Deeds of the World's Heroines • Henry Charles Moore
... 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 change again in ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... to bring up the three-headed watch-dog, Cerberus, from the doors of Tartarus. Mercury and Pallas both came to attend him, and led him alive among the shades, who all fled from him, except Medusa and one brave youth. He gave them the blood of an ox to drink, and made his way to Pluto's throne, where he asked leave to take Cerberus to the upper world with him. Pluto said he might, if he could overcome Cerberus without weapons; and this he did, struggling with the dog, with ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... Baby! You look quite ruffled. I was only pulling your leg: the pink-cheeked girls don't really flutter round, they run away in terror at your scowl. You know he can scowl, Lorraine. At least it isn't exactly a scowl; it'smore a cast-iron solemnity of such degree that it has a Medusa-like effect and freezes the poor little ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... in with a crash. There was the sudden apparition of the demoniac face, still half hidden by the long trailing black locks of hair that curled like Medusa's around it. A cry of terror filled the room. Three of the men dashed from the door and fled precipitately. The man who had spoken sprang toward his rifle in the chimney corner. But the movement was his last; a blinding flash and shattering report interposed ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... neighbor in the Palazzo Pitti at the distance of a stone's throw. In the late afternoons they would wander out to the Loggia dei Lanzi, where Mrs. Browning greatly admired Cellini's Perseus with the Head of Medusa, and they watched "the divine sunsets on the Arno, turning it to pure gold under the bridges." Sometimes they were joined by Hiram Powers, who was one of their earliest friends in Florence, "our chief friend and favorite," Mrs. Browning said of him, and she found him a "simple, ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... German cattle are said to be infested with liver flukes, but even when a large number are present the nourishment of the cattle is not disturbed. Thickening of the gall ducts, so that a so-called "Medusa's head" forms on the surface of the liver toward the stomach, appears in even well-nourished animals; even in cases of a cirrhosis of the liver it is seldom that any effect upon the cattle's health can be noticed, and so long as a portion of the liver tissue about twice ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... 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 ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... 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 Mycenae, the ruins of whose massive walls are still to be seen—Cyclopean ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... every corner of it, and never yet saw your equal, or even one who could be put in comparison with you. You know how to reward virtue, honour, and courage, and never to ask if it is placed in a prince, duke, lord, or peasant." Having hoisted his flag in the MEDUSA frigate, he went to reconnoitre Boulogne the point from which it was supposed the great attempt would be made, and which the French, in fear of an attack themselves, were fortifying with all care. He approached near enough ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... 'Tis 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. ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... 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 ...
— Europa's Fairy Book • Joseph Jacobs
... undisturbed by the agony of the terrible conflict, waits patiently at the foot of the steps for her playmate; but will wait in vain, for though the face of Death is hidden from us, yet we can see from the terror in the boy's eyes and quivering lips, that, Medusa-like, this grey phantom turns all it looks upon to stone; and the wings of Love are rent and crushed. Except on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome, there are perhaps few paintings to compare ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... 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 which ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... 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, still ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... forms they had beheld, there rose from the earth, obscuring the skies, a vague, dusky vapour, undulous, and coiling like a vast serpent,—nothing, indeed, of its shape and figure definite, but of its face one abrupt glare; a flash from two dread luminous eyes, and a young head, like the Medusa's, changing, more rapidly than I could have drawn breath, into a grinning skull. Then my terror made me bow my head, and when I raised it again, all that I had seen was vanished. But the terror still remained, even when I felt my mother's arm round me and heard her voice. And then, when I entered ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... 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
... king and his army were changed into stone, as if the head of Medusa had gazed upon them. The solitary stone, still called the King Stone, is the ambitious monarch; the circle is his army; and the Five Whispering Knights are five of his chieftains, who were hatching a plot against him when the magic spell was uttered. The farmers around Rollright say ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... endless 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, ...
— Fairy Tales; Their Origin and Meaning • John Thackray Bunce
... laughed, while one hand went to the breast of her shirtwaist and the other reached behind her, groping for something as she paced backward. Like a cameo in chalk her features were set and the writhing flames in her hair called up an image of Medusa. There was no change in expression, but through her parted lips broke a low laugh, terrible in its utter ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... she, as she turned her back upon him. Her face of beauty seemed turned to stone, like unto the Medusa's head with its serpent locks. He descended to the street, a weak, lifeless thing; he entered his room like a night-walker, and in the rage of his grief, he seized his hammer, brandished it high in the air ...
— The Ice-Maiden: and Other Tales. • Hans Christian Andersen
... Eumenides pursue, chasing him down for his guilt. And all the time we vainly imagine that we are some victorious hero, some Perseus, especially favoured by the gods to fare scatheless over land and sea, and bear away the Medusa's head, and live renowned and happy forever." The reverie was becoming deeper and deeper; the Roman was beginning no longer to whisper merely to himself, he was half declaiming; then of a sudden, by a ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... story. But a word must be said about the jelly-fish, partly because the inexpert will be puzzled at the inclusion of so active an animal, and partly because its story admirably illustrates the principle we are studying. The Medusa really descends from one of the plant-like animals of the early Archaean period, but it has abandoned the ancestral stalk, turned upside down, and developed muscular swimming organs. Its past is betrayed in its embryonic development. As a ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... 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 ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... ever since the doors are open to every one there has been much talk of unknown and unrecognized genius. When, twelve years earlier, Ingres' "Courtesan," and that of Sigalon, the "Medusa" of Gericault, the "Massacre of Scio" by Delacroix, the "Baptism of Henri IV." by Eugene Deveria, admitted by celebrated artists accused of jealousy, showed the world, in spite of the denials of criticism, that young and vigorous ...
— Pierre Grassou • Honore de Balzac
... in the alferez's house closed? Where was the masculine face and the flannel shirt of the Medusa or Muse of the Civil Guard while the procession was passing? Could she have understood how unpleasant was the sight of the swelling veins of her forehead, filled, it seemed, not with blood but with vinegar and bile; of her large cigar, that worthy ornament of her ...
— Friars and Filipinos - An Abridged Translation of Dr. Jose Rizal's Tagalog Novel, - 'Noli Me Tangere.' • Jose Rizal
... a bit of a shock, I can tell you, to see the old punt dashing down to the gates, with you sitting huddled up in the bottom, with your hair hanging wild, and your face the colour of chalk. You looked like a young Medusa." ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Nay let him come no more to raise the fees Of this foul 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 nought ...
— Sonnets • Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella
... was undone. She looked strikingly handsome, but the thick black strands hanging down on either side of the white face recalled to Mary a picture in the library at Lady MacMillan's. It was a clever painting of the Medusa, level-eyed, with a red mouth like a wound, and dimly seen, pale glimmering features, between the lazy writhing of dark snakes. The thing had fascinated Mary in her impressionable schoolgirl days, ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... 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. ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... here, and the rubicund visage of Mr. Fogg appeared like the head of the Medusa. He said that 'Captain' had ordered the blue roan to be saddled and brought over to me, but I knew that this was a cunning device on his part, to revisit the dwelling. Miss Bell, somehow caught the idea that Fogg was enamored of her, and the poor fellow was subjected to a volley ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... every man, with the single exception of their big sergeant. I don't like to make ugly comparisons to a man whom I believe to be more than half interested in a woman, but it makes me think of the old story about Medusa. One look at her face is too much for a man. That Sergeant McLeod went to grass the instant he caught sight of her, and ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King
... liquefied dream of Paradise that Barbara, sola mortalium, can prepare, consisting of hock and champagne and fruits and cucumber and borage and a blend of liqueurs whose subtlety transcends human thought, Barbara's Medusa glare petrified him into a living statue, the crystal jug of joy ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... I return quickly. I have already the habit of coherence. In a few hours I will go back again and begin with canvas and paint once more. My madness is a lost argument. I am a little tired. But, alas, he who has danced and slept with Medusa ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht
... the moonlight with a majesty at once magnificent and ludicrous. She had come swiftly, borne on the wings of a devouring suspicion, and she maintained for a long moment her Medusa stare of horror. Then, it was the ugliest thing that Karen had ever seen, the mask broke. Hatred, fury, malice, blind, atavistic passions distorted her face. It was to fall from one nightmare to another ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... from Great Gaunt Street, and knocking at the great bronze Medusa's head which stands on the portal of Gaunt House, brought out the purple Silenus in a red and silver waistcoat who acts as porter of that palace. The man was scared also by the Colonel's dishevelled ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Estimate! Thy name is great, MEDUSA's head thou sure must own. Do as we will, Thy coming still Turns all our hard-earned cash ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 2, April 9, 1870 • Various
... my horse 'Perseus,'" said the doctor, "in honor of the illustrious slayer of the Gorgon Medusa, and the ...
— Eric - or, Under the Sea • Mrs. S. B. C. Samuels
... snake; and suddenly his eyes narrowed, his lips drew back from his teeth, his ears pricked forward, along the ridge of his bare back the hair bristled, and the locks about his face waved and writhed as though they were the locks of Medusa herself. Ah, and were those the flanks and feet of a man, or of a beast, that bore him along so stealthily? The child watched him in a horror of fascination, rooted to the spot ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... flew,—Athene gave him wings.—Well, so when he got to where the Gorgons were living, he caught them napping, I suppose, cut off Medusa's ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... breaking of the glass at the gaze of Gorgona, as well as the squamiest serpent in her locks, mentioned in II, give us a clew as to the derivation of her name from that of the Gorgon, Medusa, whose uncomeliness was so intense as to petrify all that met her gaze. On the other hand, the glance of Gorgona seemed to be ...
— The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Jr. (The Rubiyt of Omar Khayym Jr.) • Wallace Irwin
... full of shells, and bits of coral; and what are these wonderful things coiled and tangled together, like the snakes in Medusa's hair in ...
— Madam How and Lady Why - or, First Lessons in Earth Lore for Children • Charles Kingsley
... felicitous illustration of this trait is in "The Evening Star," an earlier poem. Chrysaor, in the old mythology, sprang from the blood of Medusa, armed with a golden sword, and married Callirrhoe, one of the Oceanides. The poet, looking at evening upon the sea, muses upon the long-drawn, quivering reflection of the evening star, and sings. How the verses oscillate like the swaying calm of the sea, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... lurid glow in those solemn eyes, which looked as if they had been taken out of some Medusa's head to be set in her beautiful face. And there was a sinister threat in them too which seemed to say: 'Require nothing of her that I do not approve of, or you will be turned into stone on the spot.' She did not answer twenty words to my questions, and when I once more tasted the fresh air ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... epithets—Pehresu, the runner—was confounded by the Greek ear with the name of the hero. The dragomans, enlarging on this mistaken identity, imagined that the town was the birthplace of Danaos and Lyncseus; that Perseus, returning from Libya with the head of Medusa, had gone out of his way to visit the cradle of his family, and that he had instituted the games in remembrance of his stay there. Thebes had become the ghost of its former self; the Persian governors had neglected the city, and its princesses ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... architects more fair than those— Who built as high, as widely spread The enormous loads that clothed their head. For British dames new follies love, And, if they can't invent, improve. Some with erect pagodas vie, Some nod, like Pisa's tower, awry, Medusa's snakes, with Pallas' crest, Convolved, contorted, and compressed; With intermingling trees, and flowers, And corn, and grass, and shepherd's bowers, Stage above stage the turrets run, Like pendent groves of ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... herself concerned, that she, in particular, was to lose me. She had proposed great pleasure, she said, in the parties she should make in my company. But, after what Emily told me, she appears to me as a Medusa; and were I to be thought by her a formidable rival, I might have as much reason to be afraid of the potion, as the man she loves of the poniard. Emily has kept the secret from every body but me. And I rely on the inviolable secrecy ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... 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 Preller pointed ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement
... medusa, particularly tubes of about 0.5 inches in length, with an apparatus shaped like a proboscis at one extremity of it. These I have not attempted to describe. In general the animals we caught this day differed altogether from ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... the poets, and represented by the sculptors and painters in a standing attitude, completely armed, with a composed but smiling countenance, bearing a golden breast-plate, a spear in her right hand, and the aegis in her left, having on it the head of Medusa, entwined with snakes. Her helmet was usually encompassed with olives, to denote that peace is the end of war, or rather because that tree was sacred to her: at her feet is generally placed the owl or the cock, ...
— Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway
... so—you, or Hugh Rossiter?" stopping and regarding him with a frown that made her look for the moment like a beautiful Medusa. Then she walked on again. "Excuse me, Mr. Herrick," very haughtily, "if I say that I regard your interference with my private concerns as unjustifiable impertinence. I refuse to discuss the matter with you; I am going home. Tartar—Tim!" raising her voice. And she turned and ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... gnadige Frau,' cried Gudrun, her eyes flashing, her cheeks burning. She looked like a vivid Medusa. Her voice was loud and clamorous, the other people in the ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... of 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
... Greek theatre was remarkable for irreverent farce, for parodies of the great drama of Athens. And here is testimony to the fact: all manner of comic masks, of grotesque visages; mouths distorted into impossible grins, eyes leering and goggling, noses extravagant. I sketched a caricature of Medusa, the anguished features and snaky locks travestied with satiric grimness. You remember a story which illustrates this scoffing habit: how the Roman Ambassador, whose Greek left something to be desired, excited the uproarious derision of the assembled Tarentines—with ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... another picture of Sandro's here, which you must look at before going back to Giotto: the small Judith in the room next the Tribune, as you return from this outer one. It is just under Lionardo's Medusa. She is returning to the camp of her Israel, followed by her maid carrying the head of Holofernes. And she walks in one of Botticelli's light dancing actions, her drapery all on flutter, and her hand, like Fortitude's, light on the sword-hilt, but daintily—not ...
— Mornings in Florence • John Ruskin
... Hill. The night was perfect and the moonlight so bright I could distinctly see the air-roots of our trysting tree when more than a quarter of a mile away. I thought at the time how this tree, with its crown of luxuriant foliage and its writhing roots, might well pass for some gigantic Medusa-head with its streaming serpent-hair. As I neared the tree Lona stepped from behind it and awaited my approach. She was even more impatient than I, I thought, and my heart beat more wildly than ever. "Sweet ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... indeed, other and more solemn thoughts of the Night than Correggio; and these he tried to express by distorting form, and making her partly Medusa-like. In this lecture, as above stated, I am only dwelling on points hitherto unnoticed of dangerous evil in the too much ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... and chasms and 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 richer in ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... thought with the purpose of devouring the Andromeda of art. And now and then a Perseus, equipped with the shoes of swiftness of the ready writer, with the cap of invisibility of the editorial article, and it may be with the Medusa-head of vituperation, shows himself ready to try conclusions with the scientific dragon. Sir, I hope that Perseus will think better of it [laughter]; first, for his own sake, because the creature is hard of head, strong of jaw, and for some time past has shown a great capacity for going ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... '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
... gales and typhoons; read accounts of shipwrecks and horrible disasters; peruse the Narratives of Byron and Bligh; familiarise yourselves with the story of the English frigate Alceste and the French frigate Medusa. Though you may go ashore, now and then, at Cadiz and Palermo; for every day so spent among oranges and ladies, you will have whole months of rains ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... daily uttered, carrying in its womb the future bane of a lifetime; we should see these things till we sickened, and reeled, and grew blind with pain before the ghastly face of the Future, as men in ancient days before the loathsome visage of the Medusa! ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... and historical scenes were the work of an artist," Henley ventured to observe, looking at a strange head of Medusa. ...
— The Ghost of Guir House • Charles Willing Beale
... her, when Tom said, "Here, Lucy, you come along with me," and walked off to the area where the toads were, as if there were no Maggie in existence. Seeing this, Maggie lingered at a distance, looking like a small Medusa with her snakes cropped. Lucy was naturally pleased that cousin Tom was so good to her, and it was very amusing to see him tickling a fat toad with a piece of string when the toad was safe down the area, with an iron grating over him. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... The Splendid Outcast The Black Stone The Golden Bough The Secret Witness Paradise Garden The Yellow Dove The Flaming Sword Madcap The Silent Battle The Maker of Opportunities The Forbidden Way The Bolted Door Tony's Wife The Medusa Emerald ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... they could possibly be brought before the most powerful 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
... clear, transparent substance like jelly, which were so thin as to be almost invisible to the naked eye. Thus I came to know that the beautiful phosphoric light, which I had so often admired before, was caused by animals; for I had no doubt that these were of the same kind as the medusa or jelly-fish, which are seen in all parts of ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... 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 ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... millions who weep? Will you give them joy for their sorrow, sweet labour, and satisfied sleep? Sweet is the fragrance of flowers, and soft are the wings of the dove, And no goodlier gift is there given than the dower of brotherly love; But you, O May-Day Medusa, whose glance makes the heart turn cold, Art a bitter Goddess to follow, a terrible Queen to behold. We are sick of spouting—the words burn deep and chafe: we are fain, To rest a little from clap-trap, and probe ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 30, 1892 • Various
... Hydra was not more petrified at the sight of the head of Medusa than was Mr. John by the sight of the person who had just addressed him. It ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... Poetry by Lady Charlotte Elliot (from "Medusa" and other poems). Music by Robert B. Addison.—A very poetical setting of a very ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 355, October 16, 1886 • Various
... the glove was the calm, self-contained gentleman I used to admire; the splashy Rubenses, the pallid Guidos, the sunlit Claudes, the shadowy Poussins, the moonlit Girardets, Gericault's terrible shipwreck of the Medusa, the exquisite home pictures of Gerard Douw and Terburg,—all these and many more have always been on exhibition in my ideal gallery, and I only mention them as the first that happen to suggest themselves. The ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... Lonner had 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 ...
— The Home in the Valley • Emilie F. Carlen
... seemed almost to have a life of its own, almost Medusa-like, thick, glossy and moist, lying in heavy, sweet-smelling masses over her forehead, over her small ears with their pink lobes, and far down upon her nape. Deep in between the coils and braids it was of a bitumen brownness, but in the sunlight ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... 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 hideous? To think Where thy pale ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards
... faced the east, the left faced the north, the extreme left (the Guyomar brigade) faced the west; but they did not know whether they faced the enemy, they did not see him; annihilation struck without showing itself; they had to deal with a masked Medusa. Our cavalry was excellent, but useless. The field of battle, obstructed by a large wood, cut up by clumps of trees, by houses and by farms and by enclosure walls, was excellent for artillery and infantry, but bad for cavalry. ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... was accustomed to the petrifying effect of her sudden presence on a beauty-worshipping sex. She did not walk as other mortals walk, but floated in fragrantly and Skippy stood staring rock-still, as though Hippo had flashed the head of Medusa. None of which by the way was lost on the keenly ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... highly organised than themselves, voraciously; apparently enjoying the destruction of the unfortunate members of the upper classes with a truly democratic relish. One of them even attacked and commenced the swallowing of a Lizzia octopunctata, quite as good a medusa as itself. An animal which can pout out its mouth twice the length of its body, and stretch its stomach to corresponding dimensions, must indeed be "a triton among the minnows;" and a very terrific one too. Yet is this ferocious creature ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... Emmeline, because she looked just about like that—an impressionist water-color. Between the one picture and the other there were twelve or fifteen of the bric-a-brac things already mentioned; also an oil-painting by Elihu Vedder, "The Young Medusa." Every now and then the children required me to construct a romance—always impromptu—not a moment's preparation permitted—and into that romance I had to get all that bric-a-brac and the three pictures. I had to start always with the cat and finish with Emmeline. I was never allowed the ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... interrupted me again and again. I felt cast away in a foreign land; further and further from the home feeling every minute; and it seemed besides as if the climate had some power of petrifaction. I could not keep Medusa out of my head. It was a relief at last when the tea was brought in. Miss Pinshon took the magazine out ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... another expedient, especially as now a wretched little studio had been erected, brick on brick, so miserably built that the mere recollection of it gives me pain. So then I began the figure of Medusa, and constructed the skeleton in iron. Afterwards I put on the clay, and when that was ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... before each, if they had wanted to understand it. What a number of pictures! There was no end to them. They must be worth a mint of money. Right at the end, Monsieur Madinier suddenly ordered a halt opposite the "Raft of the Medusa" and he explained the subject to them. All deeply impressed and motionless, they uttered not a word. When they started off again, Boche expressed the general ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... fringes, are here thrown mainly on the lower (largest) petal near its origin, and opposite the point of the seizure by the calyx, spreading from this centre over the surface of the lower petals, partly like an irregular shower of fine Venetian glass broken, partly like the wild-flung Medusa like embroidery of the ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... she came down again. Two somewhat trying hours, to judge from the expression on her face, which wore a look as grim as any ever sported by Medusa. Her eyes were cold and hard as she marched promptly to the closed study door and rapped upon ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... 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 a dilated base, and having its uppermost ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... detachments of British artillery, clattering gun-carriages, straight young figures on glossy horses, long Phidian lines of youths so ingenuously fair that one wondered how they could have looked on the Medusa face of war and lived. Men and beasts, in spite of the dust, were as fresh and sleek as if they had come from a bath; and everywhere along the wayside were improvised camps, with tents made of waggon-covers, where the ceaseless indomitable work of cleaning was being carried out in all its ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... stories of tournaments. No enchantress gave him a charmed coat of mail; no Minerva put the head of Medusa on his shield—no, nothing of all that. But—Keesje, the butcher's boy, might look sharp for ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... have seen 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 ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... Fourth Circle: The Avaricious and the Prodigal. Plutus. Fortune and her Wheel. The Fifth Circle: The Irascible and the Sullen. Styx. VIII. Phlegyas. Philippo Argenti. The Gate of the City of Dis. IX. The Furies and Medusa. The Angel. The City of Dis. The Sixth Circle: Heresiarchs. X. Farinata and Cavalcante de' Cavalcanti. Discourse on the Knowledge of the Damned. XI. The Broken Rocks. Pope Anastasius. General Description of the Inferno and its Divisions. XII. The ...
— Divine Comedy, Longfellow's Translation, Hell • Dante Alighieri
... pages of notes on everything and hardly one complete treatise on anything. He began a hundred studies and finished none of them. He had a queer twist to his mind that made him, with all his power, seek byways. The monstrous, the uncouth, fascinated him; he saw a Medusa in a spider and the universe in a drop of water. He wrote his notes in mirror-writing, from right to left; he illustrated them with a thousand fragments of exquisite drawing, all unfinished and tantalizing alike to the artist and to the ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... 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 ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... woman, nature's fairest ill, The woe of man, that first created curse, Base female sex, sprung from black Ate's loins, Proud, disdainful, cruel and unjust, Whose words are shaded with enchanting wiles, Worse than Medusa mateth all our minds; And in their hearts sit shameless treachery, Turning a truthless vile circumference! O, could my fury paint their furies forth! For hell's no hell, compared to their hearts, Too simple devils to conceal their arts; Born to be plagues unto the thoughts of ...
— The Critics Versus Shakspere - A Brief for the Defendant • Francis A. Smith
... shudder while it fascinated me, as if in those loathsome snakes, writhing and glittering round the expiring head, and those abhorred and fiendish abominations crawling into life, there still lurked the fabled spell which petrified the beholder. Poor Medusa! was this the guerdon of thy love? and were those the tresses which enslaved the ocean's lord? Methinks that in this wild mythological fiction, in the terrific vengeance which Minerva takes for her profaned temple, and in the undying snakes which ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... he been Medusa, the glance he bent upon his spouse would have transformed her instantly into a not particularly symmetrical statue of concrete. He had ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... imagination be nurtured in this atmosphere of savourless modernism? Then I asked myself: who comes 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 exotic riff-raff enlivened ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... the crowning 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
... 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 ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... 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 ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... children, if she has them, must be as the perfectly discreet and peaceful, unravished Kore; on the other hand, we have Persephone, as the wholly terrible goddess of death, who brings to Ulysses the querulous shadows of the dead, and has the head of the gorgon Medusa in her keeping. And it is only when these two contrasted images have been [95] brought into intimate relationship, only when Kore and Persephone have been identified, that the deeper mythology ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... thine eyes upon me, Lazarus," he ordered. "I heard thy face is like that of Medusa and turns into stone whomsoever thou lookest at. Now, I wish to see thee and to have a talk with thee, before I turn into stone,"—added he in a tone of kingly jesting, not devoid ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... trust in God; run about and earn your penn'orth of potatoes as best you can. Life is about to become a hideous inferno. Let us pass quickly over this phase. Amid this lamentable chaos, my love for the insect ought to have gone under. Not at all. It would have survived the raft of the Medusa. I still remember a certain pine cockchafer met for the first time. The plumes on her antennae, her pretty pattern of white spots on a dark brown ground were as a ray of sunshine in the gloomy ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... And wish and struggle, as they pass, to reach The tempting stream, with one small drop to loose In sweet forgetfulness all pain and woe, All in one moment, and so neer the brink; But fate withstands, and to oppose th' attempt 610 Medusa with Gorgonian terror guards The Ford, and of it self the water flies All taste of living wight, as once it fled The lip of Tantalus. Thus roving on In confus'd march forlorn, th' adventrous Bands With shuddring horror ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... Transformation of Alcithoe and her sisters to bats. Juno's fury. Madness of Athamas; and deification of Ino and Melicertes. Change of the Theban women to rocks and birds. Cadmus and Hermione changed to serpents. Perseus. Transformation of Atlas to a mountain. Andromeda saved from the sea monster. Story of Medusa. ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... such countenances!—such a hideous expression of malice, cunning, and cruelty!—and the effect is beyond conception appalling. Leonardo da Vinci worked upon the same grand principle of art in his Medusa— ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... 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 to represent that ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... enough," Lady Kirke was vowing with a toss of her head; and we none of us gave another look to the royal boxes that night, though all about the wits were cracking their jokes against M. Radisson's "Medusa locks," or "the king's idol, with feet of clay and face of brass," thereby meaning M. Radisson's moccasins and swarth skin. At the door we were awaiting M. Radisson's return when the royal company came out. I turned ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... 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: "You are to proceed ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... 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 ...
— The Red Romance Book • Various
... is gone, and my despair over your loss is 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
... Pegasus, when, while high up in the air, he saw Andromeda bound to a rock and exposed to the lusts and voracity of a sea monster. Touched by the misfortune and the beauty of the princess, he turned the monster to stone by showing him the head of Medusa, released Andromeda and married her.—Euripides had just produced a tragedy on ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... 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 gray hair. ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 • Various
... heard themselves called upon for another effort, and saw officers springing up the hill again towards that shot-fretted crest where several Engineers and bluejackets, with the Imperial Light Horse, still clung as if they had looked on Medusa's head, and become part of the rocks among which they lay, only that their forefingers were playing about the triggers, ready in a moment to give back shot for shot to the Boers. And when deeds of heroism were being performed by Major Miller-Wallnutt; Lieutenant Digby-Jones, R.E., Gunner Sims ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... sufficiently fool-hardy to remain on this globe I will find him, no matter in what distant land he strives to hide himself, and transfix him with this good sword—unless indeed he be first turned to stone by the terrible Medusa-like power ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... that it was, caused it to be made smooth and even. And afterwards, having given it a coat of gesso, and having prepared it in his own way, he began to think what he could paint upon it, that might be able to terrify all who should come upon it, producing the same effect as once did the head of Medusa. For this purpose, then, Leonardo carried to a room of his own into which no one entered save himself alone, lizards great and small, crickets, serpents, butterflies, grasshoppers, bats, and other strange kinds of suchlike animals, out of the number of which, variously put ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari
... were, as they had been from the beginning, closed upon each other in that stony self-collected calm, which was only not a sneer. The wonder, if it was one, had passed: and now—did her eyes play her false, or were the snakes round that Medusa's head upon the shield all writhing, grinning, glaring at her with stony eyes, longing to stiffen her with terror into their ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... been well 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 ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... whiter and grimmer, until finally it set itself in rigid lines. Her mouth was hard, her eyes expanded as if they saw far beyond the crystal mountains glittering before the open windows. Her mass of dark hair had fallen, and Mrs. Tolby whispered to Mrs. Prentiss that she looked like the Medusa in the Glyptothek ...
— The White Morning • Gertrude Atherton
... dead men's bones And rear a phantom gibbet for a mast, Stitch shrouds together for a sail, with groans To fill it out, blood-stained and aghast; Although your rudder be a dragon's tail Long severed, yet still hard with agony, Your cordage, large uprootings from the skull Of bald Medusa, certes you would fail ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... strange lady smiled again and said, "You are too young, for this is Medusa the Gorgon. Return to your home, and when you have done the work that awaits you there, you may be worthy to go ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... surgeon with reference to the part on which his skill is to be exercised. It enables him to see with the mind's eye through the opaque tissues down to the bone on which they lie, as if the skin were transparent as the cornea, and the organs it covers translucent as the gelatinous pulp of a medusa. ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... looking grotesquely terrible, they discussed the event. Caroline, like Medusa, but with hair curlers instead of snakes sprouting from her head, and Sophia with her heavy plait hanging over her shoulder and defying with its luxuriance the yellowness of her skin, they sat side by side, propped up with pillows, ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... comprehensive biography and entered into correspondence with a publisher in Germany.[A] He confronted the formal culture of the Latin races with the character of the German mind, as it were the head of the Medusa, and the consciousness of his mission kept up his spirits under the most trying circumstances. With Paris as an art centre he had done. Like Mozart's "Idomeneo" to the Opera Seria, "Rienzi" was his last tribute to the Grand Opera. ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl
... attached to the rocks in the form of a charming little shrub, stretching its red branches in all directions. The Greeks, who were never at a loss, relate that Perseus one day laid down upon the sea-shore the famous head of Medusa, the sight of which had the property of turning everything to stone, and that the nymphs, in sport, showed it to the coral shrubs; a fact which explained everything quite naturally. Without exactly holding this mythological ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... 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 out of ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... the Colonel might have ordered a private to go on sentry-duty. Ten days earlier Billy would have jumped at the chance; ten days later he would probably have suggested it himself; but at that exact moment he would have as willingly contemplated matrimony with Alecto or Medusa or any of the Furies. Accordingly, he declined. Frederick R. Woods flew into a pyrotechnical display of temper, and gave him his choice between obeying his commands and leaving his house forever—the ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... The character in my Corean copy is {.}, which must be a mistake for the {.} of the Chinese editions. Otherwise, the meaning would be "a small medusa." ...
— Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms • Fa-Hien
... the grand procession of their apotheosized divinities. There Hercules perpetually wrought his mighty labors for the good of man; there flashed and faded the changeful star Algol, as an eye in the head of the snaky-haired Medusa; over them flew Pegasus, the winged horse of the poet, careering among the stars; there the ship Argo, which had explored all strange seas of earth, nightly sailed in the infinite realms of heaven; there Perseus perpetually killed the sea-monster by celestial aid, ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren
... having cut off Medusa's head, made the ship Pegas[^e], the swiftest ship hitherto known, and ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... with the law of God. And, first, let us see what is alleged from Scripture for the ceremonies in general; then, after, let us look over particulars. There is one place which they will have in mythology to stand for the head of Medusa, and if they still object to us for all their ceremonies even that of the Apostle, "Let all things be done decently and in order," 1 Cor. xiv. 40. What they have drawn out of this place, Dr Burges(819) hath refined in this manner. He distinguished betwixt praeceptum and probatum, ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... all the forest with her piercing cries, without making those relentless monsters recede from their design. Never woman so ardently wished to be beautiful, as she did to become deformed, she would have rejoiced so have had her lovely face that moment changed into the likeness of Medusa; but all her prayers and tears were ineffectual; victim of force and rage.—-The cruel leader of these fiends had just effected his diabolical intentions, when a sudden noise of the trampling of horses and the distant voices of men, forced them to fly. Fear, the companion of villainous actions, ...
— The Princess of Ponthieu - (in) The New-York Weekly Magazine or Miscellaneous Repository • Unknown
... each was tearing her breast, they beat themselves with their hands, and cried out so loud that I pressed close to the Poet through dread. "Let Medusa come, so we will make him of stone," they all said, looking down. "Ill was it we avenged ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... 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
... red and black, representing Orestes and Electra at the tomb of Agamemnon. In these cases also are some Athenian glass vases, and opaque glass vessels from Melos; terra-cotta bas-reliefs, representing Bellerophon destroying the Chimera; Perseus destroying the gorgon Medusa, and other classical subjects; and upon the third shelf, amid unguent boxes, terra-cotta lamps, and a terra-cotta doll, is a curious vase containing bones, with a silver Athenian coin, attached to the jar by careful relatives, to pay for the deceased's transit across ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... The continual talk about Charlotte Corday had filled him with curiosity regarding this young girl who had been so daring and so patriotic. She was denounced on every hand as a murderess with the face of a Medusa and the muscles of a Vulcan. Street songs about her were dinned into the ears ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... analogy of the alternation of generations. If a Bipinnaria, a Brachiolaria, 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, might become a hydroid polype, or ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... rows of columns executed in perspective, which, with the depth of the intercolumniation, cause it to appear much larger. But what is the greatest marvel of all is a loggia that may be seen over the garden, painted by Baldassarre with scenes of the Medusa turning men into stone, such that nothing more beautiful can be imagined; and then there is Perseus cutting off her head, with many other scenes in the spandrels of that vaulting, while the ornamentation, drawn in perspective with colours, in imitation ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 05 ( of 10) Andrea da Fiesole to Lorenzo Lotto • Giorgio Vasari
... of verse for every piano rehearsal, and this I faithfully did until the whole book was done. I was much surprised to learn some time later that Reissiger had had a new libretto written for him by an actor named Kriethe. This was called the Wreck of the Medusa. I then learned that the wife of the conductor, who was a suspicious woman, had been filled with the greatest concern at my readiness to give up a libretto to her husband. They both thought the book was good and full of striking effects, but they suspected some sort ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... got into the milord, he looked up, and the lady and the husband hastily vanished, as though the Baron's face had affected them like the mythological head of Medusa. ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... been the beauty, and terrible the power of the woman who could produce such an impression on Lycinus. Tell me of this petrifying Medusa. Who is she, and whence? I would see her myself. You will not grudge me that privilege? Your jealousy will not take alarm at the prospect of a rival ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... long moments he lay on his oars, hearing the blue tide with a ceaseless motion heave and swirl and gutter all round its rocky border, and the serpents' hiss come from some Medusa's head of trailing weed uttered in venomous warning. Under flying moons the shaggy hemlock grove was like a bearskin thrown over the white and leprous nakedness of stony flanks. At the approach of storm the shadows stealing forth from that sullen, bowbacked ridge were ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... cover it quickly so that we can get to the immediate practical aspects. Are you interested in biodynamics ... umah ... no, of course not. Let me see. Are you at all familiar with the laws pertaining to refraction of ... umah, no." He cleared his throat again, unhappily. "Have you ever seen a medusa, Mr. Crowley? The gelatinous umbrella-shaped free swimming form of marine invertebrate related to the coral polyp and the ...
— The Common Man • Guy McCord (AKA Dallas McCord Reynolds)
... expire, Yet men and beasts Astronomers will tell Fixed in heavenly Constellations dwell, My Planets of both Sexes whose degree Poor Heathen judg'd worthy a Diety; There's Orion arm'd attended by his dog; The Theban stout Alcides with his Club; The valiant Persens, who Medusa slew, The horse that kil'd Beleuphon, then flew. My Crab, my Scorpion, fishes you may see The Maid with ballance, twain with horses three, The Ram, the Bull, the Lion, and the Beagle, The Bear, the Goat, the Raven, and the ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... revolver within two feet of his chest, looked at him with undisguised 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 ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... 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
... black blood with which it was filled gushed over her face and neck, while the long sucking arms of the fish, in the convulsive paroxysm of the operation, were twisting and writhing about her head, like the snaky hairs of a Medusa. Occupied as both hands were, she could only give her visitor a nod. Mr. Stewart remarks, 'It was the first time I had seen her Majesty, and I soon took my departure, leaving her, as I found her, in the full enjoyment of her luxurious ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... like Medusa's head in wrath, and who was, I think, fonder of the sound than any other of our poets. Indeed, in compounds of the kind we always make a distinction wholly independent of the doubled s. Nobody would boggle at mountainside; no one would ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... 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 ...
— Stories in Verse • Henry Abbey
... issuing from which are four circular chambers; each chamber contains a masterpiece of art. In one is the Apollo Belvedere, in another the Laocoon (both safely arrived from Paris); in the third Antinous; in the fourth the Perseus of Canova, with Medusa's head and his famous group of the two pugilists. Descriptions of the three first would ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... 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 ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... swayed and sickened, scourged and scarified The unwilling slaves of fashion and discomfort A quarter of a century since! She sat, A spectral, scraggy, beet-nosed, ankle-less, Obtrusive-panted, splay-foot, slattern-shape, Of grim Medusa-faced Immodesty, Caged cumbrously in a stiff, swaying, swollen, Shin-scarifying, hose-revealing frame Of wide-meshed metal, like a monster mousetrap— Hideous, indecent, awkward! Oh, I knew her— This loathly revenant, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 21, 1893 • Various
... whenever she had a disengaged week, to accept his invitation to Knowl, from whence she was resolved to whisk me off to London, where, though I was too young to be presented at Court and come out, I might yet—besides having the best masters and a good excuse for getting rid of Medusa—see a great deal that would ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu |
