GORGON POEMS

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 gibbous bones of the mummied Earth,
.....

Clark Ashton Smith

Perseus And Medusa

I met her mirrored stare:
The cycles of stone glories
Locked in the Gorgon's glare.

.....

Clark Ashton Smith

Endymion: Book Iv

Muse of my native land! loftiest Muse!
O first-born on the mountains! by the hues
Of heaven on the spiritual air begot:
Long didst thou sit alone in northern grot,
.....

John Keats

The Odyssey: Book 11

Then, when we had got down to the sea shore we drew our ship into
the water and got her mast and sails into her; we also put the sheep
on board and took our places, weeping and in great distress of mind.
Circe, that great and cunning goddess, sent us a fair wind that blew
.....

Homer

Comus

A Masque Presented At Ludlow Castle, 1634, Before

The Earl Of Bridgewater, Then President Of Wales.

.....

John Milton

A Winter Night

The winter wind is raving fierce and shrill
And chides with angry moan the frosty skies,
The white stars gaze with sleepless Gorgon eyes
That freeze the earth in terror fixed and still
.....

John Hay

Tempora Mutantur

'The world is dull,' I cried in my despair:
'Its myths and fables are no longer fair.

'Roll back thy centuries, O Father Time.
.....

Ambrose Bierce

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.
.....

Gerard Manley Hopkins

The Iliad: Book 11

And now as Dawn rose from her couch beside Tithonus, harbinger of
light alike to mortals and immortals, Jove sent fierce Discord with
the ensign of war in her hands to the ships of the Achaeans. She
took her stand by the huge black hull of Ulysses' ship which was
.....

Homer

Ode To Fancy

O parent of each lovely Muse,
Thy spirit o'er my soul diffuse,
O'er all my artless songs preside,
My footsteps to thy temple guide.
.....

Joseph Warton

America

I
Where the wings of a sunny Dome expand
I saw a Banner in gladsome air-
Starry, like Berenice's Hair-
.....

Herman Melville

Master Hugues Of Saxe-gotha

An imaginary composer.]

I.

.....

Robert Browning

Ode To Adversity

Daughter of Heav'n, relentless pow'r,
Thou tamer of the human breast,
Whose iron scourge, and tort'ring hour,
The bad affright, afflict the best!
.....

John Gay

Charmides

HE was a Grecian lad, who coming home
With pulpy figs and wine from Sicily
Stood at his galley's prow, and let the foam
Blow through his crisp brown curls unconsciously,
.....

Oscar Wilde

Metamorphoses: Book 05

While Perseus entertain'd with this report
His father Cepheus, and the list'ning court,
Within the palace walls was heard aloud
The roaring noise of some unruly crowd;
.....

Ovid

The Curse Of Minerva

Slow sinks, more lovely ere his race be run,
Along Morea's hills the setting Sun;
Not, as in northern climes, obscurely bright,
But one unclouded blaze of living light;
.....

George Gordon Lord Byron

Athena

Force of reason, who shut up the shrill
foul Furies in the dungeon of the Parthenon,
led whimpering to the cave they live in still,

.....

Amy Clampitt

The Curse Of Minerva.

- "Pallas te hoc vulnere, Pallas
Immolat, et poenam scelerato ex sanguine sumit."

Aeneid, lib. xii, 947, 948.
.....

George Gordon Byron

Hymn To Adversity

Daughter of Jove, relentless Power,
Thou tamer of the human breast,
Whose iron scourge and tort'ring hour
The Bad affright, afflict the Best!
.....

Thomas Gray

The Iliad: Book 05

Then Pallas Minerva put valour into the heart of Diomed, son of
Tydeus, that he might excel all the other Argives, and cover himself
with glory. She made a stream of fire flare from his shield and helmet
like the star that shines most brilliantly in summer after its bath in
.....

Homer

Aspecta Medusa (for A Drawing)

Andromeda, by Perseus sav'd and wed,
Hanker'd each day to see the Gorgon's head:
Till o'er a fount he held it, bade her lean,
And mirror'd in the wave was safely seen
.....

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Charmides I

He was a Grecian lad, who coming home
With pulpy figs and wine from Sicily
Stood at his galley's prow, and let the foam
Blow through his crisp brown curls unconsciously,
.....

Oscar Wilde

The Burden Of Itys

This English Thames is holier far than Rome,
Those harebells like a sudden flush of sea
Breaking across the woodland, with the foam
Of meadow-sweet and white anemone
.....

Oscar Wilde

The Vision Of The Maid Of Orleans: The Third Book

The Maiden, musing on the Warrior's words,
Turn'd from the Hall of Glory. Now they reach'd
A cavern, at whose mouth a Genius stood,
In front a beardless youth, whose smiling eye
.....

Robert Southey

Sonnet. The Double Rock

Since thou hast view'd some Gorgon, and art grown
A solid stone:
To bring again to softness thy hard heart
Is past my art.
.....

Henry King

Prologue To Spring

The winter landscape hangs in balance now,
Transfixed by glare of blue from gorgon's eye;
The skaters freese within a stone tableau.

.....

Sylvia Plath

Keepe On Your Maske And Hide Your Eye

Keepe on your maske, and hide your eye,
For with beholding you I dye:
Your fatall beauty, Gorgon-like,
Dead with astonishment will strike;
.....

William Strode

Aspecta Medusa ( For A Drawing)

Andromeda, by Perseus sav'd and wed,
Hanker'd each day to see the Gorgon's head:
Till o'er a fount he held it, bade her lean,
And mirror'd in the wave was safely seen
.....

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Harvest

Day is the hero's shield,
Achilles' field,
The light days are the angels.
We the seed.
.....

Kathleen Jessie Raine

Caverns

Aisles and abysses; leagues no man explores,
Of rock that labyrinths and night that drips;
Where everlasting silence broods, with lips
Of adamant, o'er earthquake-builded floors.
.....

Madison Julius Cawein

To The Reviewers

Oh! ye, enthroned in presidential awe,
To give the song-smit generation law;
Who wield Apollo's delegated rod,
And shake Parnassus with your sovereign nod;
.....

Thomas Gent

Dialogue

One said: 'I have seen, from cliffs of doom,
The seven hells flame up in flower
Like a million upas trees that tower,
Massing their realms of poisonous bloom.
.....

Clark Ashton Smith

The Ghost

There stands a City,, neither large nor small,
Its air and situation sweet and pretty;
It matters very little if at all
Whether its denizens are dull or witty,
.....

Richard Harris Barham

The Cap And Bells; Or, The Jealousies: A Faery Tale - Unfinished.

I.

In midmost Ind, beside Hydaspes cool,
There stood, or hover'd, tremulous in the air,
.....

John Keats

Grandeur

Dedicated to the mountains of the San Juan district,
Colorado, as seen from the summit of Mt. Wilson.


.....

Alfred Castner King

The Abandoned

SHE sat by the wayside and wept, where roses, red roses and white,
Lay wasted and withered and sere, like her life and its ruined delight;
Like chaff blown about in the wind whirled roses, white roses and red,
And pale, on night's threshold, the moon bent over the day that was dead.
.....

Mathilde Blind

Keepe On Your Maske (version For His Mistress)

Keepe on your maske and hide your eye
For in beholding you I dye.
Your fatall beauty Gorgon-like
Dead with astonishment doth strike.
.....

William Strode

Ode To Hope

I. 1.

O Thou, who glad'st the pensive soul,
More than Aurora's smile the swain forlorn,
.....

James Beattie

To Mrs. Frances--arabella Kelly.

To Day, as at my Glass I stood,
To set my Head--cloaths, and my Hood;
I saw my grizzled Locks with Dread,
And call'd to mind the Gorgon's Head.
.....

Mary Barber

The Progress Of Taste, Or The Fate Of Delicacy

Part first.

Perhaps some cloud eclipsed the day,
When thus I tuned my pensive lay:
.....

William Shenstone

The Sleeping City

A Princess in the eastern tale
Paced thro' a marble city pale,
And saw in ghastly shapes of stone
The sculptured life she breathed alone;
.....

George Meredith

Fixed Ideas

RANKS of electroplated cubes, dwindling to glitters,
Like the other pasture, the trigonometry of marble,
Death's candy-bed. Stone caked on stone,
Dry pyramids and racks of iron balls.
.....

Kenneth Slessor

A Corymbus For Autumn

Hearken my chant, 'tis
As a Bacchante's,
A grape-spurt, a vine-splash, a tossed tress, flown vaunt 'tis!
Suffer my singing,
.....

Francis Thompson

Excerpt From Speke, Parrot

Parotte.
So many morall maters,* and so lytell vsyd ;
So myche newe makyng,* and so madd tyme spente ;
So myche translacion in to Englyshe confused ;
.....

John Skelton

Crystal Gazer

Gerd sits spindle-shaped in her dark tent,
Lean face gone tawn with seasons ,
Skin worn down to the knucklebones
At her tough trade; without time's taint
.....

Sylvia Plath

Otho The Great - Act V

SCENE I.

A part of the Forest.
Enter CONRAD and AURANTHE.
.....

John Keats

At Fredericksburg-dec. 13, 1862

GOD send us peace, and keep red strife away;
But should it come, God send us men and steel!
The land is dead that dare not face the day
When foreign danger threats the common weal.
.....

John Boyle O'reilly

The Patriot's Game

I.
TEAR down the crape from the column! Let the shaft stand white and fair!
Be silent the wailing musicâ??there is no death in the air!
We come not in plaint or sorrowâ??no tears may dim our sight:
.....

John Boyle O'reilly

Love, Dreaming Of Death

I dreamt my little boys were dead
And I was sitting wild and lone;
On closed unmoving knees my head
Lay rigid as a stone.
.....

Charles Harpur

Adversaries

Who are these that meet
At random in the street?
Adversaries! Yet they
Make no sign nor stay.
.....

Robert Laurence Binyon