"Gorgon" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that are gone before, whom I would fain have seen—Theseus and Pirithous—glorious children of the gods, but so many thousands of ghosts came round me and uttered such appalling cries, that I was panic stricken lest Proserpine should send up from the house of Hades the head of that awful monster Gorgon. On this I hastened back to my ship and ordered my men to go on board at once and loose the hawsers; so they embarked and took their places, whereon the ship went down the stream of the river Oceanus. We had to row at first, but presently a ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... pure, the gentle breath of love, Low murmuring, cool thy bosom's fiery glow. Orestes, fondly lov'd,—canst thou not hear me? Hath the terrific Furies' grisly band Dried up the blood of life within thy veins? Creeps there, as from the Gorgon's direful head, A petrifying charm through all thy limbs? With hollow accents from a mother's blood, If voices call thee to the shades below, May not a sister's word with blessing rife Call from ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... that I have made great speeches, held high positions, acquired fame, is due to the inner sickness that night by the river. You will find that the name of many a man of my age is in men's mouths because at the outset Defeat became his trophy, the Gorgon's head, despoiled by his first sword of hiss and venom. So there, my friends, you have the rule you ask for—fail once so ignominiously that you wish to die, and you may wrest from fate a brief name and the ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... body turned to stone every beholder, rescues the maiden from chains, and leads her away by the bands of love. Nothing could be more poetical than the life of Perseus. When he went to destroy the dreadful Gorgon, Medusa, Pluto lent him his helmet, which would make him invisible at will; Minerva loaned her buckler, impenetrable, and polished like a mirror; Mercury gave him a dagger of diamonds, and his winged sandals, which would carry him through the air. Coming ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren
... of confirming a young and candid mind in prudent and excellent dispositions. After humbling herself in vain before a mother, this poor young lady was now to withstand a father's reproaches; and, after the inexorable Miss Strictland, she was to encounter the exasperated Miss Bateman. Whether the Gorgon terrors of one governess, or the fury passions of the other, were most formidable, it was difficult to decide. Miss Bateman had written an epilogue for Lady Julia to recite in the character of Calista; and, with the combined ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... bull, but actually as a lion or bull wearing the protome of another.[24:1] Hera, boopis, with a cow's head; Athena, glaukopis, with an owl's head, or bearing on her breast the head of the Gorgon; Heracles clad in a lion's skin and covering his brow deino chasmati theros, 'with the awful spread jaws of the wild beast', belong to the same class. So does the Dadouchos at Eleusis and other initiators who let candidates for purification ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... wings to fly, Pluto an invisible helmet, and Minerva a mirror-shield, by looking in which he could discover how his enemy was disposed, without the danger of meeting her eyes. Thus equipped, he accomplished his undertaking, cut off the head of the Gorgon, and pursed it in a bag. From this exploit he proceeded to visit Atlas, king of Mauritania, who refused him hospitality, and in revenge Perseus turned him into stone. He next rescued Andromeda, daughter ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... who most elaborately describes every city, mountain, field, and river, and cries out with all his might, "May the great averter of evil turn it all on our enemies!" This is colder than Caspian snow, or Celtic ice. The emperor's shield takes up a whole book to describe. The Gorgon's {35} eyes are blue, and black, and white; the serpents twine about his hair, and his belt has all the colours of the rainbow. How many thousand lines does it cost him to describe Vologesus's breeches and his horse's bridle, and how Osroes' hair looked when he swam ...
— Trips to the Moon • Lucian
... goat's skin), the shield of Zeus, made of the hide of the goat AMALTHEA (q. v.), representing originally the storm-cloud in which the god invested himself when he was angry; it was also the attribute of Athena, bearing in her case the Gorgon's head. ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... loved so well. Up a stark cliff we went, then crossed the web Just as the red moon bloomed upon the hills And silvered all the Panticapean vale. The funnel of the web was in the mouth Of a vast tomb, whose outside, hewn on rock, Outlined a Gorgon's face with jaws agape— Some stern Medusa, Stheno, or Euryale, Changed to the stone that in the elder days She changed the sons of men who looked on her. We passed the funnel, entering the tomb. About my arms the spider threw his cords, And shackled them. I dared not move, but lay ...
— Stories in Verse • Henry Abbey
... of one of them (she becoming for the time absorbed into her two sisters)—for as medieval devil he has no right of entree into that classical scene in which he and Faust are now to play their parts. It is therefore in the form of a Phorkyad or Gorgon that Mephisto will appear when we next ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... ah! how changed, Since o'er the Dardan field in arms she ranged! Not such as erst, by her divine command, Her form appeared from Phidias' plastic hand: Gone were the terrors of her awful brow, Her idle AEgis bore no Gorgon now; 80 Her helm was dinted, and the broken lance Seemed weak and shaftless e'en to mortal glance; The Olive Branch, which still she deigned to clasp, Shrunk from her touch, and withered in her grasp; And, ah! though still the brightest of the ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... her; then seeing Sir John sitting where the bright lamplight shown full upon his pale elderly face, with its strongly marked features, black eyebrows, and silvery-gray hair, she stopped suddenly as if she had beheld a Gorgon, and began to back slowly till she brought herself up against the silken skirt of Adela Hawberk's gown; and in that soft drapery she in a manner absorbed herself, till there was nothing to be seen of the little neatly rounded figure except the tip of a bright red cap ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... symbolical vase in relief; ornaments in stucco, on the front of the main building, consisting of the lotus, the sistrum, representations of gods, Harpocrates, Anubis, and other objects of Egyptian worship. The figures on one side of this temple are Perseus with the Gorgon's head; on the other side, Mars and Venus, with Cupids bearing the arms of Mars. We next observe three altars of different sizes. On one of them is said to have been found the bones of a victim unconsumed, the last sacrifice having ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... In the Loggia? where is set Cellini's godlike Perseus, bronze or gold, (How name the metal, when the statue flings Its soul so in your eyes?) with brow and sword Superbly calm, as all opposing things, Slain with the Gorgon, were no more abhorred Since ended? No, the people sought no wings From Perseus in the Loggia, nor implored An inspiration in the place beside From that dim bust of Brutus, jagged and grand, Where Buonarroti passionately tried From out the close-clenched marble to demand The head ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... feelings, and became so cold and shy that she could not fail to notice it. She soon did notice it, and HER manner altered too: the familiar nod was changed to a stiff bow, the gracious smile gave place to a glare of Gorgon ferocity; her vivacious loquacity was entirely transferred from me to 'the darling boy and girls,' whom she flattered and indulged more absurdly than ever their ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... trident is overthrowing the walls and rooting up the city from its foundations; and how Juno stands with spear and shield in the Scaean Gate and calls fresh hosts from the ships; and how Pallas sits on the height with the storm-cloud about her and her Gorgon shield; and how Father Jupiter himself stirs up the enemy against Troy. Fly, therefore, my son. I will not leave thee till thou shalt reach thy father's house." And as she spake she ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... gigantic, lo, the bursting forth Of the barbarian sweeps on, age-wrought; Oceans are cleft and swallow Gorgon-ships, Castles of might afloat! ...
— Life Immovable - First Part • Kostes Palamas
... adversaries possibly to be met with in the darkness. The fight with Grendel's mother touches on other motives; the terror is further away from human habitations, and it is accompanied with a charm and a beauty, the beauty of the Gorgon, such as is absent from the first adventure. It would have loosened the tension and broken the unity of the scene, if any such irrelevances had been admitted into the story of the fight with Grendel. The fight with Grendel's mother is fought under other conditions; the stress is ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... Rose Hill and confirmed the supposition that the Nepean was an affluent of the Hawkesbury, a matter over which there had been some doubt since its first discovery by Tench. Tench returned to England in H.M.S. Gorgon, in ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... making a spot of fire in the room. Marcella caught the expression of her profile, and her own face took a look of pain. She would have liked to go instantly to the girl's side, with some tenderness, some caress. But that gorgon Lady Kent, now looking extremely fierce, was in the way, and moreover other young men had arrived to take the place Ancoats ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... were the three Furies of the Greek legends. When they beheld Dante they howled for the Gorgon, Medusa, with the snaky locks to come quickly and turn him into stone—a fate that must befall all men that gazed upon her face. But Vergil bade Dante hide his eyes, and to be sure that he might be saved he covered ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... own critics, we shall not find it difficult to guess why it is that Stevenson at least found a final philosophy of some sort to live by, while Mr. Moore is always walking the world looking for a new one. Stevenson had found that the secret of life lies in laughter and humility. Self is the gorgon. Vanity sees it in the mirror of other men and lives. Pride studies it for itself and is ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... fell at length upon a cobbler, Giles Gorgon by name, who produced several new grins of his own invention, having been used to cut faces for many years together over his last. At the very first grin he cast every human feature out of his countenance; at the second he became the ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... fresh calamity, retires from Thebes, and flies to Illyria, together with his wife, where they are both transformed into serpents. Of those who despise Bacchus, Acrisius alone remains, the grandfather of Perseus, who, having cut off the head of the Gorgon Medusa, serpents are produced by her blood. Perseus turns Atlas into a mountain, and having liberated Andromeda, he changes sea-weed into ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... arrived at Almeida, I learned that the "Medea" sloop-of-war was lying off Oporto, and expected to sail for England in a few days. The opportunity was not to be neglected. The official despatches, I was aware, would be sent through Lisbon, where the "Gorgon" frigate was in waiting to convey them; but should I be fortunate enough to reach Oporto in time, I had little doubt of arriving in England with the first intelligence of the fall of Ciudad Rodrigo. Reducing my ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... the brute-god Pan, who sought to madden him with the terror of his piping in desolate places; at another it was the sun-god Apollo, who threatened him with fiery arrows in the parching heat of noon; or it was Pallas Athene, who appeared to him in visions, and shook in his face the Gorgon's head, which turns to stone all living creatures who look on it. But the holy Bishop made the sign of the cross of the Lord, and the right arm of their power was broken, and their malice could not ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton
... that this experience was a trial of his faith, and that if he stood out a little longer, his doubt would pass away. He lifted his head and glanced at the serpent still coiled upon the hearth. Its eyes were fixed upon him in a gorgon-like stare, and his doubts became positive certainties, as disgust became loathing. The battle had ended. The mystic had been defeated. This sudden collapse had come because the foundations of his faith had been honeycombed. The innocent serpent had been, not the cause, ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... are as brave a youth as I believe you to be," replied King Polydectes, with the utmost graciousness of manner. "The bridal gift which I have set my heart on presenting to the beautiful Hippodamia is the head of the Gorgon Medusa with the snaky locks; and I depend on you, my dear Perseus, to bring it to me. So, as I am anxious to settle affairs with the princess, the sooner you go in quest of the Gorgon, the ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... of iron, And gnash, beside the streams of fire and wail, 345 Your foodless teeth. Geryon, arise! and Gorgon, Chimaera, and thou Sphinx, subtlest of fiends Who ministered to Thebes Heaven's poisoned wine, Unnatural love, and more unnatural hate: These shall ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... to the Church for help in this hour of his need! but it was slowly dawning on him that not from the Church would help come to his cause; for a grievous thing had happened to the Church. The slave gorgon sat staring from the pews, and turning the pulpits to stone, turning also to stone the hearts ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... time, then, the notion peeped up in Grant's mind that the whirligig of existence might see Doris his wife. But the conceit resembled the Gorgon's teeth, which, when sown in the ground, sprang forth as armed men. The very accident which revealed a not unpleasing possibility had established a grave obstacle in the way of its ultimate realization. Already there was a cloud between him and the Martins, father and daughter. To what a tempest ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... 30th HMS "Gorgon" arrived, towing the brig which brought out Mrs Livingstone and some ladies about to join the University mission, as well as the sections of a new iron steamer intended for the navigation of Lake Nyassa. The name of the "Lady Nyassa" was given ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... "what! hast thou not a word of oily compliment to me on my happy marriage?—not a word of most philosophical consolation on my disgrace at Court?—Or has my mien, as a wittol and discarded favourite, the properties of the Gorgon's head, the turbatae Palladis arma, as ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... the Countess, in alarm at the sigh, 'do not be too—too touched. Do, pray, preserve your wits. You weep! Caroline, Caroline! O my goodness; it is just five-and-twenty minutes to the first dinner-bell, and you are crying! For God's sake, think of your face! Are you going to be a Gorgon? And you show the marks twice as long as any other, you fair women. Squinnying like this! Caroline, for your Louisa's ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... human soul had debased itself to objects beneath the dignity of its own nature, and thus prepared itself for all moral corruption; and the massive sepulchral monuments in which the hopeless despair of heathenism had, as it were, become petrified by the Gorgon gaze of death. That Appian Way should be to us the most interesting of all the roads of the world; for by it came to us our civilisation and Christianity—the divine principles and hopes that redeem the soul, retrieve the vanity ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... troublesome matter to find one to suit," the squire said thoughtfully. "I don't want a harsh sort of Gorgon, to repress her spirits and bother her life out with rules and regulations; and I won't have a giddy young thing, because I should like to have the child with me at breakfast and lunch, and I don't want a fly-away young woman who will expect ...
— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty
... consciousness of a weakness may lead us to give it rein. Perfect strength can coexist only with perfect knowledge, but neither is attainable by man. Man should pay to be screened from himself, lest his sword fail,—lest the Gorgon's head on his ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... well I wanted to marry you. But you fly off without a word and bury yourself in this benighted place with a gorgon who ...
— Death At The Excelsior • P. G. Wodehouse
... the fabulous Jack to overcome the hoary giants of prejudice and custom, or the irrepressible energy of the Gorgon. It has been helpful to remember away "down North" the stand which Archbishop Ireland took for public schools. When the Episcopal clergyman for Labrador, whom we had been influential in bringing out from England, decided to start an ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... followed by exclamation points! There will be exclamations, at any rate, over this book, surely the most beautiful of the year, perhaps of several years. The quality of Arthur Rackham's work is well known, its artistic value is undisputedly of the very highest. And Hawthorne's text—the story of the Gorgon's head, the tale of Midas, Tanglewood, and the rest—is of the finest literary, poetic ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... thee, were that Tamburlaine As monstrous [188] as Gorgon prince of hell, The Soldan would not start a foot from him. But ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part I. • Christopher Marlowe
... the only way to insure the friendship and assistance of your surrounding acquaintance is to convince them you do not require it, for when once the petrifying aspect of distress and penury appear, whose qualities, like Medusa's head, can change to stone all that look upon it; when once this Gorgon claims acquaintance with us, the phantom of friendship, that before courted our notice, will vanish into unsubstantial air, and the whole world before us appear a barren waste. Pardon me, ye dear spirits of benevolence, whose ...
— Charlotte Temple • Susanna Rowson
... learnt this, at first by report, but subsequently by certain intelligence, and while all were in suspense from dread of the impending danger, the dependents of the court, hammering on the same anvil day and night (as the saying is), at the prompting of the eunuchs, held up Ursicinus as a Gorgon's head before the suspicious and timid emperor, continually repeating that, because on the death of Silvanus, in a dearth of better men, he had been sent to defend the eastern districts, he had become ambitious of still ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... the cheap sunshine or by shady springs, With roots and pot-herbs; where thy right hand, Tearing those humane passions from the mind, Upon whose stocks fair blooming virtues flourish, Degradeth nature, and benumbeth sense, And, Gorgon-like, turns active men to stone. We not require the dull society Of your necessitated temperance, Or that unnatural stupidity That knows nor joy nor sorrow; nor your forc'd Falsely exalted passive fortitude Above ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... Gorgon's head before Polydectes's guests and turning them to stone wrought hardly more of a miracle than this calm announcement of Themistocles. Men stared at him vacantly, stunned by the tidings, then Adeimantus's frightened ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... standing on a pedestal, leans upon her spear. The Gorgon's skin covers her breast, and a linen peplum descends in regular folds even to her toe-nails. Her grey eyes, which shine beneath her vizor, ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... graceful, slender, ultra-feminine body of Margaret Severence's, as she descended the stairs, putting fresh gloves upon her beautiful, idle hands, he would have borrowed wings of the wind and would have fled as from a gorgon. ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... deceived her. Escape was impossible; I groaned and sweated with anguish, but listen I must, and had to suffer martyrdom for an hour, when the Governor's door opened, and he himself looked out. On seeing the Gorgon he tried to withdraw, but she pounded like a tigress through the door-way, and slamming the door after her, secured an audience with his Excellency, which she took care should not be a short one. I could remain no longer, and therefore owe the rest of the story to public report. ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... didst not thou engage me man to man, And try the virtue of that Gorgon face, To stare me ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... a prince. That ill-omened and chaotic agglomeration of diverse forms of evil has yet a kind of anarchic order in it, and, like the fabled serpent's locks on the Gorgon head, they intertwine and sting one another, and yet they are a unity. We hear very little about 'the prince of the world' in Scripture. Mercifully the existence of such a being is not plainly revealed until the fact of Christ's victory over him is revealed. But ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... well, you are afraid of Athene and the Gorgon; at least so you say, though you do not mind Zeus's thunderbolt a bit. But why do you let the Muses go scot free? do they toss their plumes and ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... was rather curtly answered with a "Did I suppose these gnats were intended to be shrined in amber? these mere minnows to be treated with the high consideration due only to potted char and white bait? these fleeting thoughts fixed in stone before that Gorgon-head, the public? these ephemeral fancies dropped into the true elixir of immortality, printer's-ink? these——" I stopped him, for this other mighty mouthful of images betrayed the hypocrite—"Yes, I did." An involuntary ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... supported anywhere; for so did the famous Lame One fashion him of gold with his hands. On his feet he had winged sandals, and his black-sheathed sword was slung across his shoulders by a cross-belt of bronze. He was flying swift as thought. The head of a dreadful monster, the Gorgon, covered the broad of his back, and a bag of silver—a marvel to see—contained it: and from the bag bright tassels of gold hung down. Upon the head of the hero lay the dread cap [1804] of Hades which ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... bust which stood there so placidly before him, just as the poor youth did at the British Museum, who threw a stone at the Portland vase, to prove that he also was a man, and had volition, and was not to be looked into stone by the Gorgon of society. Fortunately, however, Sir John Steventon himself ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... Evening Star, who held up the sky upon his shoulders, in the midst of the Fortunate Islands, the gardens of the daughter of the Evening Star, full of strange golden fruits; and that Perseus had turned him into stone, when he passed him with the Gorgon's Head. ...
— Madam How and Lady Why - or, First Lessons in Earth Lore for Children • Charles Kingsley
... devoured by a monster of the deep) on condition he might make her his wife: but Phineas, her uncle, sought to prevent him, by attempting, with a party, to carry off the bride. The attempt, notwithstanding, was rendered abortive; for the hero, by showing them the head of the Gorgon, at once turned ...
— Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway
... rather be your fool and sot, always merry, ever young, and making sport for other people, than either Homer's Jupiter with his crooked counsels, terrible to everyone; or old Pan with his hubbubs; or smutty Vulcan half covered with cinders; or even Pallas herself, so dreadful with her Gorgon's head and spear and a countenance like bullbeef? Why is Cupid always portrayed like a boy, but because he is a very wag and can neither do nor so much as think of anything sober? Why Venus ever in her prime, but because of her affinity with me? Witness that color of her hair, ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus
... a gorgon fight! A cruel monster hell-born, Whose hungry maw, ignoring law, Mocks misery's tears to scorn. She may not slay the beast, but aye Her blows will badly scratch it; All praise is due the woman true, Who wields ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... accessories To his bold riot: Dreadful was the din Of hissing through the hall, thick swarming now With complicated monsters head and tail, Scorpion, and Asp, and Amphisbaena dire, Cerastes horned, Hydrus, and Elops drear, And Dipsas; (not so thick swarmed once the soil Bedropt with blood of Gorgon, or the isle Ophiusa,) but still greatest he the midst, Now Dragon grown, larger than whom the sun Ingendered in the Pythian vale or slime, Huge Python, and his power no less he seemed Above the rest still to retain; they all Him followed, issuing forth to the open field, Where all yet left ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... appearance of being past bending by any means short of powerful mechanical pressure. Her bonnet was cocked up behind in a terrific manner; and her stony reticule was as rigid as if it had been petrified by the Gorgon's head, and had got it at that moment inside. With these imposing attributes, Mr F.'s Aunt, publicly seated on the steps of the Marshal's official residence, had been for the two or three hours in question ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... become agitated, and Buck was left wondering the more. She was stirred with strange feelings which embodied a dozen different emotions, and it was the sight of that great black crown, like the head of a Gorgon, which had inspired them. Its fascination was one of cruel attraction. Its familiarity suggested association with some part of her life. It seemed as if she belonged to it, or that it belonged to her—that in some curious ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... climbed up the wall and took from her hair the flower as she wept, in exchange for another which—which the Squire had sent her. And she whispered a word of sorrow, and he another of comfort, and came away. And the Gorgons suspected nothing; except perhaps the littlest Gorgon, and she looked ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... dungeon to the good and just. Exulting o'er his slaves, the winged God Here in a theatre his triumphs show'd, Ample to hold within its mighty round His captive train, from Thule's northern bound To far Taprobane, a countless crowd, Who, to the archer boy, adoring, bow'd. Sad fantoms shook above their Gorgon wings— Fantastic longings for unreal things, And fugitive delights, and lasting woes; The summer's biting frost, and winter's rose; And penitence and grief, that dragg'd along The royal lawless pair, that ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... vortex-like that tube of tin Suck'd the censorious particle in; And, truth to tell, for as willing an organ As ever listen'd to serpent's hiss, Nor took the viperous sound amiss, On the snaky head of an ancient Gorgon! ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... fighting him, mounted on Pegasus; Pandora opening the box; Hercules talking with Atlas, an enormous giant who holds the sky on his shoulders, or sailing across the sea in an immense bowl; Perseus transforming a king and all his subjects to stone, by exhibiting the Gorgon's head. No particular accuracy in costume need be aimed at. My stories will bear out the artist in any liberties he may be inclined to take. Billings would do these things well enough, though his characteristics are grace and delicacy rather ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... kings and persons of spacious lives, but they have been sublet to smaller folk. Or does no one live inside? You never see a curtain stir. There is never a face at a window. Everything is stone and dead. One might think that a Gorgon had gone riding on a 'bus top, and had thrown his cold eye upon the house fronts." Flint paused. "How can one live obscurely, as these folk do, in the twilight, in so beautiful a shell? Even a ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... Of women strange to look at sleepeth there Before this wanderer, seated on their stools; Not women they, but Gorgons I must call them; Nor yet can I to Gorgon forms compare them; I have seen painted shapes that bear away The feast of Phineus. Wingless, though, are these, And swarth, and every way abominable. They snort with breath that none may dare approach, And from their eyes a loathsome humour pours, And such their garb ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... war was a matter of experiment! As if you could take it up or lay it down as an idle frolic! As if the dire goddess that presides over it, with her murderous spear in hand, and her gorgon at her breast, was a coquette to be flirted with! We ought with reverence to approach that tremendous divinity, that loves courage, but commands counsel. War never leaves where it found a nation. It is never to be entered into without mature ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... loggia, which opposes the free and elegant span of its arches to the dead masonry of the palace; a figure supremely shapely and graceful; gentle, almost, in spite of his holding out with his light nervous arm the snaky head of the slaughtered Gorgon. His name is Perseus, and you may read his story, not in the Greek mythology, but in the memoirs of Benvenuto Cellini. Glancing from one of these fine fellows to the other, I probably uttered some irrepressible commonplace of praise, for, as if provoked by my voice, ...
— The Madonna of the Future • Henry James
... have asked a very skilful Hand, to have depicted to the Life the Faces of those Three Persons, at Don Mario's Appearance. He that has seen some admirable Piece of Transmutation by a Gorgon's Head, may form to himself the most probable Idea of the Prototype. The Old Gentleman was himself in a sort of a Wood, to find his Daughter with a Young Fellow and a Priest, but as yet he did not know the Worst, till Hippolito and ...
— Incognita - or, Love & Duty Reconcil'd. A Novel • William Congreve
... to translate; and finding her own reply. "Ah, yes, the Medusa!" then, as more than one exclaimed in indignant dismay, she said, "No, not the Gorgon, but the beautiful winged head, with only two serpents on the brow and one coiled round the neck, and the ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... swear I am something revived at this testimony of your obedience; but I cannot admit that traitor,—I fear I cannot fortify myself to support his appearance. He is as terrible to me as a Gorgon: if I see him I swear I shall ...
— The Way of the World • William Congreve
... is as like Mr. Wilberforce as one pea to another, and you might fancy, that, at some ordinary moment, when he least expected it, and before he had time to smooth away his knowing complication of wrinkles, he had seen the Gorgon's head, and whitened into marble,—not only his personal self, but his coat and small-clothes, down to a button and the minutest crease of the cloth. The ludicrous result marks the impropriety of bestowing the age-long duration of marble upon small, characteristic individualities, ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Why, how now, signior Deliro! has the wolf seen you, ha? Hath Gorgon's head made ...
— Every Man Out Of His Humour • Ben Jonson
... And gorgon shield,—or, power to fright Man's folly, dreadful shone, And many a blockhead (easy change!) Turn'd, instantly, ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... cry of battle? where must I bring my aid? where must I sow dread? who wants me to uncase my dreadful Gorgon's head?(1) ...
— The Acharnians • Aristophanes
... and the physiognomy of Hellenism. Yet Cyprian artists probably executed the work. There are little departures from Greek models, which indicate the "barbarian" workman, as the introduction of trees in the backgrounds, the shape of the furniture, the recurved wings of the Gorgon, and the idea of hunting the wild bull. But the figures, the proportions, the draperies, the attitudes, the chariot, the horse, are almost pure Greek. There is a grace and ease in the modelling, an elegance, a variety, to which Asiatic art, left to itself, never attained. The style, ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... close to the bank of a muddy river there was something which glittered in the pale light. He flew a little nearer; but he did not dare to look straight forward, lest he should all at once meet the gaze of a Gorgon, and be changed into stone. So he turned around, and held the shining shield before him in such a way that by looking into it he could see objects behind him ...
— Old Greek Stories • James Baldwin
... bondage. I never in my life said anything merely because I thought it funny; though of course, I have had ordinary human vainglory, and may have thought it funny because I had said it. It is one thing to describe an interview with a gorgon or a griffin, a creature who does not exist. It is another thing to discover that the rhinoceros does exist and then take pleasure in the fact that he looks as if he didn't. One searches for truth, but ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... before them, some blood-drops fell from the severed head of Medusa, and from them bred the vipers that are found in the desert to this day. But bravely did the winged shoes of Hermes bear Perseus on, and by nightfall the Gorgon sisters had passed from sight, and Perseus found himself once more in the garden of the Hesperides. Ere he sought the nymphs, he knelt by the sea to cleanse from his hands Medusa's blood, and still does the seaweed that ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... entrance of the city of King Pluto. The shades which sadly wandered back and forth before the gates of the city took flight as soon as they caught sight of flesh and blood in the form of a living man. Only the Gorgon Medusa and the spirit of Meleager remained. The former Hercules wished to overthrow with his sword, but Mercury touched him on the arm and told him that the souls of the departed were only empty shadow pictures and could not be wounded by ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... boy, I must be moving, or the mud will dry on me, and I shall stand here as though I were turned to stone by the Gorgon's head! So have with thee! Go on first, master hawk-tamer. What will bear thee ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... about the origin of their species and hold learned discussions upon the meaning of evolution and the Gospel according to Darwin. This cheese-epic is a rather unsavoury production and the style is at times so monstrous and so realistic that the author should be called the Gorgon-Zola of literature. ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... his wife engaged in even innocent conversation with her lover, his face still calm, should produce the effect mythologically attributed to the celebrated Gorgon. ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... sweet humility with a strong sense of their wickedness. Then comes Law, with its whips and bonds, to chastise and tie up "the offending Adam"—that is, the Adam without a pocket,—and then the gentle violence of kindly Mother Church leads the poor man far from the fatal presence of his Gorgon wants, to consort him with meek-eyed Charity,—to give him glimpses of the Land of Promise,—to make him hear the rippling waters of Eternal Truth,—to feast his senses with the odours of Eternal sweets. Happy English poor! Ye are not scurfed with ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 9, 1841 • Various
... vanity which was expressed in that face? No; but dread, horror, almost disgust, as she gazed with side-long, startled eyes, struggling, and yet struggling in vain, to turn her face from some horrible sight, as if her own image had been the Gorgon's head. ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... be nursed by you!" he cried. "I won't have you near me, glaring at me with your Gorgon stare. Send another nurse to me—send the doctor. Get out of my sight, Gorgon! Don't look ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... side lever engine (fig. 26), and the oscillating engine (fig. 27), besides numerous other forms of engine which are less known or employed, such as the trunk (fig. 22), double cylinder (fig. 23), annular, Gorgon (fig. 24), steeple (fig. 25), and many others. The side lever engine, however, and the oscillating engine, are the only kinds of paddle engines which have been received with ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne
... crimson field, And blue-eyed Pallas shook her Gorgon shield; O'er the hushed waves their mightier monarch drove, And Ida trembled to the tread ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... eye Deep flashing through the midnight of their mind, The sable bands combined, Where Fear's black banner bloats the troubled sky, Appall'd retire. Suspicion hides her head, Nor dares the obliquely gleaming eyeball raise; Despair, with gorgon-figured veil o'erspread, Speeds to dark Phlegethon's detested maze. Lo! startled at the heavenly ray, With speed unwonted Indolence upsprings, And, heaving, lifts her leaden wings, And ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... tonic. Ashe was positively grateful to the "old gorgon" who wrote it. He ran up-stairs, his pulses tingling in defence of Kitty. He would show Lady Grosville that she could not write to him, at any rate, ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... love—with a young lady, too, who would have brought me a very good fortune—when she suddenly produced from her reticule a very neat pair of No. 4, set in tortoise-shell, and, fixing upon me their Gorgon gaze, froze the astonished Cupid into stone! And I hold it a great proof of the wisdom of Riccabocca, and of his vast experience in mankind, that he was not above the consideration of what your pseudo sages would have regarded as foppish and ridiculous ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... What is't you say, the Life? Lenox. Meane you his Maiestie? Macd. Approch the Chamber, and destroy your sight With a new Gorgon. Doe not bid me speake: See, and then speake your ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... Gorgon, having power to petrify my tongue. I am not afraid of him; and my respect for your feelings is much stronger ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... and pulled a Gorgon-face. Encouraged by Ritter, she managed to down about half of ...
— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper
... sight could penetrate, ere it gave birth to the arch from its summit. Dead crusaders lay around in stone, and strove with grim visage to draw the sword and smite the worshippers of Mohammed, as if in the very act they had been petrified by a new Gorgon's head. The steps of the intruders seemed sacrilegious, breaking the solemn stillness of the night as the father led the son into the chapel of the patron saint ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... whom Eliphalet Duncan had fallen in love was the daughter of Mother Gorgon. But he never saw the mother, who was in 'Frisco, or Los Angeles, or Santa Fe, or somewhere out West, and he saw a great deal of the daughter, who was up in the White Mountains. She was traveling with her brother and his wife, and as they journeyed from hotel to ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... like a god!" cried Kirkpatrick; "I have felt as a man, and like a man I revenge. This head shall destroy in death; it shall vanquish its friends for me; for I will wear it like a Gorgon on my sword, to turn to stone every Southron who looks on it." While speaking, he disappeared amongst the thickening ranks; and as the victorious Scots hailed him in passing, Montgomery, thinking of his perishing men, suffered ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... the central hall towards the principal entrance Claudia suddenly stopped as though the Gorgon's head had blasted her sight. For Lord Vincent stood near the open door, as if to witness and triumph over her expulsion. With a strong effort she conquered her weakness and approached the door. The viscount made a low and ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... 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 of ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... ear-witness of that which he relates. He is the very man who has heard the tormented spirits crying out for the second death, who has read the dusky characters on the portal within which there is no hope, who has hidden his face from the terrors of the Gorgon, who has fled from the hooks and the seething pitch of Barbariccia and Draghignazzo. His own hands have grasped the shaggy sides of Lucifer. His own feet have climbed the mountain of expiation. His ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... dread, awe, terror, horror, dismay, consternation, panic, scare, stampede (of horses). intimidation, terrorism, reign of terror. [Object of fear] bug bear, bugaboo; scarecrow; hobgoblin &c (demon) 980; nightmare, Gorgon, mormo^, ogre, Hurlothrumbo^, raw head and bloody bones, fee-faw-fum, bete noire [Fr.], enfant terrible [Fr.]. alarmist &c (coward) 862. V. fear, stand in awe of; be afraid &c adj.; have qualms &c n.; apprehend, sit upon thorns, eye askance; distrust &c (disbelieve) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... by these ships, of the unfortunate accident which befel his Majesty's ship Guardian, in her passage to this country, with provisions and stores; and also that the Gorgon was fitting, to bring farther supplies, with another lieutenant-governor, who commanded a corps that had been raised for this particular service, the marines being ordered ...
— An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island • John Hunter
... the youth, brushing himself, and assuming all the dignity of which he was master. "Wonder who that is? Housekeeper, perhaps? Quite the Gorgon, whoever it is. Wish I didn't ...
— Margaret Montfort • Laura E. Richards
... being in readiness for the second attempt at laying the cable, the "Niagara" sailed from New York in March, 1858, to take on her portion of the cable at Plymouth. The "Agamemnon" was again ordered to assist in the undertaking, and the "Gorgon" was made her consort Mr. Field had hoped that the "Susquehanna" would again be the consort of the "Niagara," but a few days before the sailing of the fleet he was officially informed that he could not have the ship, as she was then in the West Indies, with the greater ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... said her husband good-humouredly, "be not always a boder of ill. Thou deemest a Goth worse than a gorgon or hydra, whereas, I assure you, they are very good fellows after all, if you stand up to them like a man, and trust their word. Old Meinhard is a ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... The men sat transfixed with agony and dread, the women were caught in the wild clutches of hysteria, and Courtney himself was as if possessed with a frenzy: his features were rigid, his eyes dilated, and his hair rose and clung in wavy locks, so that he seemed a very Gorgon's head. The only person apparently unmoved was old Dr Rippon, whose pale, gaunt form rose in the background, ...
— Master of His Fate • J. Mclaren Cobban
... most horrible, 325 (Let none them read) thereof did verses frame, With which and other spelles like terrible, He bad awake blacke Plutoes griesly Dame,[*] And cursed heaven and spake reprochfull shame Of highest God, the Lord of life and light; 330 A bold bad man, that dar'd to call by name Great Gorgon,[*] Prince of darknesse and dead night, At which Cocytus[*] quakes, and Styx is ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser
... evidence does the Odyssey afford, that Homer sold his Trojan war-ballads at three yards an obolus? "3. Show the strong presumption there is, that Nox was the god of battles. "4. State reasons for presuming that the practice of lithography may be traced back to the time of Perseus and the Gorgon's head. "5. In what way were the shades on the banks of the Styx supplied with spirits? "6. Show the probability of the College Hornpipe having been used by the students of the Academia; and give passages from Thucydides and Tennyson ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... cruel tyrant named Polydectes wanted Danae to be his wife, and, as she would not consent, he shut her up in prison, saying that she should never come out till her son Perseus had brought him the head of the Gorgon Medusa, thinking he must be lost by the way. For the Gorgons were three terrible sisters, who lived in the far west beyond the setting sun. Two of them were immortal, and had dragon's wings and brazen claws and serpent hair, but their sister Medusa was mortal, and so beautiful in the face ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge
... these dire Goddesses in the shape of dogs will kill me, these gorgon-visaged ministers ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... wickedest of creatures; Oh, gaze not on the Syren's fatal features, More baneful than the Gorgon head, Medusa. ...
— Turandot: The Chinese Sphinx • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
... other.—If marble could see and feel, the separation might be prudent,—if it could only see, it would certainly lose its coldness, and learn to feel; and, in such a case, the charms of these two figures would produce an effect quite opposite to that of the Gorgon's head, which turned flesh into stone. Did I pretend to describe to you the Venus, it would only set your imagination at work to form ideas of her figure; and your ideas would no more resemble that figure, than the Portuguese face of Miss ——, who has enchanted our knights, resembles ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... in whose sweet cheerful look Duke Humphrey once such joy and pleasure took, Sorrow hath so despoil'd me of all grace, Thou couldst not say this was my Elnor's face. Like a foul Gorgon," &c. ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... themselves, and inaugurated a new dispensation. Society here is like a broken loom, and the piece which Rebellion put in, and was weaving, has been cut, and every thread broken. You must put in new warp and new woof, and weaving anew, as the fabric slowly unwinds we shall see in it no Gorgon figures, no hideous grotesques of the old barbarism, but the figures of liberty, vines, and golden grains, framing in the heads of justice, love, and liberty. The august convention of 1787 formed the Constitution with this memorable preamble: "We, the people of the United States, in order to ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... great dreary house, and day succeeded day, and still she lived alone; and the blank walls looked down upon her with a vacant stare, as if they had a Gorgon-like mind to stare her youth and beauty ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... likes, can oppose to the individual in the assertion of his rights, is far more compact and powerful than in Russia, or even in Germany. Even where it does not employ the arm of the law, society knows how to use that quieter, but more crushing pressure, that calm, Gorgon-like look which only the bravest and stoutest hearts ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... colour paled a little, and she looked anxious. Not Perseus, coming at last in sight of his Gorgon, had a heart more sick with fear than hers was at ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... have no reference to my situation. Yet, unreasonable as it may appear, I confess that my feelings were not altogether so ecstatic as when I first called Mrs. Bullfrog mine. True, she was a sweet woman and an angel of a wife; but what if a Gorgon should return, amid the transports of our connubial bliss, and take the angel's place. I recollected the tale of a fairy, who half the time was a beautiful woman and half the time a hideous monster. Had I taken that very fairy to be the wife ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Critics, whisper thee, litigious wretches! Oblivion's hand shall finish all my Sketches. But see, my soul such bug-bears has repell'd With magnanimity unparallel'd! Take up the volumes, every care dismiss, And smile, gruff Gorgon! while I tell thee this: Not one shall lie neglected on the shelf, All shall be sold—I'll buy them ...
— Poetic Sketches • Thomas Gent
... beyond all else in artistic importance are the metopes from Selinuntium, which, though much damaged, show marks of high excellence. They are of clearly different dates, though all very archaic. The oldest represent Perseus cutting off the Gorgon's head, and Hercules killing two thieves. Perseus has the calm, sleepy look of a Hindoo god,—while Gorgon's head, with goggle eyes and protruding tongue, resembles a Mexican idol. Hercules and the thieves have more of an Egyptian character. The material ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... only knew," said Fink, "why they have had the madness to attack the strongest side of our fortress! It can only be that your peaceful visage has had the effect of the Gorgon's head upon them. Henceforth you will be described as a scarecrow ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... "Gorgon—Gorgon of Poitou," he returned with enthusiasm. "They are getting as rare now as this," he declared, nodding to the cobwebbed bottle, as he rose, drew the cork, and ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... cast-bronze countenance of Roman emperors. But the old men bear rigid faces of carved basalt, gazing fixedly before them as though at some time or other in their past lives they had met Medusa: and truly Etna in eruption is a Gorgon, which their ancestors have oftentimes seen shuddering, and fled from terror-frozen. The white-haired old women, plying their spindle or distaff, or meditating in grim solitude, sit with the sinister set ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... awful, with high promise fraught, And guardian terrors, whose out-flashing swords Beleaguer Paradise and the holy Tree Sciential. Step by step the way is fought That leads from Darkness, through her miscreant hordes, Back to the heavens of wise, and true, and free: Minerva's Gorgon, Ammon's cyclic Asp, And the fierce flame-sword of the Cherubim, That flashed like hate across the pallid gasp Of exiled Eve and Adam, flare, and glare, And hiss venenate, round the steps of him Who thirsts for heavenly Wisdom, if he dare Climb to her bosom, or with artless ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... avenging Furies, "Gorgon-like, vested in sable stoles, their locks entwined with clustering snakes," has fled to Delphi to invoke the aid of Apollo. He clasps the navel-stone and in his exhaustion falls asleep. Around him sleep the Furies. The play opens with ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... with shapes Of intermittent motion, aspect vague, And mystic bearings, which o'ercreep the earth, Keeping slow time with horrors in the blood;" the Gorgon's petrific Head, the Bear's frightful form, Berenice's streaming Hair, the curdling length of Ophiuchus, and the Hydra's horrid shape. The poetic eye of old religion saw gods in the planets walking ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... her light, lively tones in lady's bower, Seen her long locks that foil the painter's power, Her fairy form, with more than female grace, Scarce would you deem that Saragoza's tower Beheld her smile in Danger's Gorgon face, Thin the closed ranks, and ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... he began again, "we have lives of our own.... There's no use attempting the impossible. You're so unprejudiced about some things, so used, as you say, to looking at the Gorgon, that I don't know why you're afraid to face our case, and see it as it really is—unless you think the sacrifice is not ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... gloom, common in early spring to this latitude. Its form was unique and exaggerated, with flaming eyes, and mouth of huge proportions, with long, pointed teeth, white and sharp. For weeks, this gorgon of my imagination constituted the theme of neighborhood gossip. Several negroes had seen it, and fled its fierce pursuit, barely escaping its voracious mouth and attenuated claws, through the fleetness of fear. The old hardshell Baptist preacher, of the vicinage, had proclaimed him ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... age she loses her brilliant complexion. Yet, for reasons best known to herself, her colour continues to be bright, though her spirits and her temper seem to suffer in the effort to keep it so. As old age advances, she is as likely as not to become a gorgon of immaculate propriety, and will be heard lamenting over the laxity of manners which permits girls to do what was never dreamt of when she was a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, March 15, 1890 • Various
... Greek art, remember to keep yourselves clear about the difference between the Lion and the Gorgon. ...
— The Pleasures of England - Lectures given in Oxford • John Ruskin
... large stone courtyard before it, and two stone sweeps of staircase meeting in a stone terrace before the principal door. A stony business altogether, with heavy stone balustrades, and stone urns, and stone flowers, and stone faces of men, and stone heads of lions, in all directions. As if the Gorgon's head had surveyed it when it was finished two ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... bearing large round shields of basket-work, and long ill-made swords. On the shields of the last are painted monstrous faces of some imaginary animal, intended to frighten the enemy, or, like another gorgon, ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... it," cried poor Campian, "give her ten, give her ten, brother Pars—Morgans, I mean; and take care of your shins, Offa Cerbero, you know—Oh, virago! Furens quid faemina possit! Certainly she is some Lamia, some Gorgon, some—" ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... It was famous for a temple erected in honor of Kali, the fearful wife of the god Siva, the most cruel, vindictive and relentless of all the heathen deities. The temple still stands, being more than 400 years old, and "Kali, the Black One," still sits upon her altar, hideous in appearance, gorgon-headed, wearing a necklace of human skulls and dripping with fresh blood from the morning sacrifice of sheep and goats. She brings pestilence, famine, war and sorrows and suffering of all kinds, and can only be propitiated by the sacrifice ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... of buff leather, covered with a plate of gold, finely chased with a Gorgon's head, set round the rim with rubies, emeralds, turquoise stones, in ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... first day or two's operations was not very satisfactory. I rattled away, and did the amiable to a furious extent; but the divinity was shy, and the guardian of the temple (an old gorgon whom I shall suppress before the honeymoon is out) looked askance at me, and pulled her daughter by the sleeve whenever she seemed disposed to listen. They evidently thought the rattle might belong to a snake; did me the injustice to take me for an adventurer. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... as both strong and healthy: 'And by this you may recognize true education from false. False education is a delightful thing, and warms you, and makes you every day think more of yourself; and true education is a deadly cold thing, with a gorgon's head on her shield, and makes you every day think worse of yourself. Worse in two ways also, more is the pity: it is perpetually increasing the personal sense of ignorance, and the personal ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... the heavens by the assistance of Minerva, for having released Andromeda from her confinement on the rock to which she was chained. He is represented in the preceding illustration holding a drawn sword in his right hand and in his left the head of Medusa, the Gorgon, whose terrifying appearance changed all who beheld her into stone, and whom he had destroyed with the assistance of the wings he had borrowed from Mercury, the helmet from Pluto, the sword from Vulcan, and the shield ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... were three sisters who were gray-haired from their birth, whence their name. The Gorgons were monstrous females with huge teeth like those of swine, brazen claws, and snaky hair. None of these beings make much figure in mythology except Medusa, the Gorgon, whose story we shall next advert to. We mention them chiefly to introduce an ingenious theory of some modern writers, namely, that the Gorgons and Graeae were only personifications of the terrors of the sea, the former ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... Graham, head of the house of Graham & Company, pork packers, in Chicago, familiarly known on 'Change as Old Gorgon Graham, to his son, Pierrepont, at ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... it out in his heart. It was not that she was physically attractive to him. Mrs. Noble was that. It was not that fascination which Bella aroused, the adventuress, the siren, the gorgon. In Constance there was something different. She was a woman of the world, a man's woman. Then, too, she was so brutally ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve
... nerves were quiet compared with what they were in times gone by, and I had gradually learned the blessed lesson which is taught by familiarity with sorrow, that the greater part of what is dreadful in it lies in the imagination. The true Gorgon head is seldom seen in reality. That it exists I do not doubt, but it is not so commonly visible as we think. Again, as we get older we find that all life is given us on conditions of uncertainty, and yet we walk courageously on. The labourer marries and has children, ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... for you who never lived one upright hour will die an upright death. A certain official will erect a perpendicular with you; but for that touck of Mathematics you must go to the hangman, at whose hands you will have to receive the rites of your church, you monstrous bog-trotting Gorgon. Mine a trade! Shades of Academus, am I to ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... body of a man," and was "every way equal," or "circular." It was plated with twelve circles of bronze, and had twenty [Greek: omphaloi], or ornamental knobs of tin, and the centre was of black cyanus (XI. 31-34). There was also a head of the Gorgon, with Fear and Panic. The description is not intelligible, and I ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... it had been the Gorgon's gaze, I was turned to stone. The filmy eyes, the smile that would have been mocking had it not been so very faint, the pallor, the malignance,—I stared and stared, and my heart grew ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... by supplying each fighting man with eight drachmas, did good service in manning the fleet; and Kleidemus tells us that this money was obtained by an artifice of Themistokles. When the Athenians were going down to the Peiraeus, he gave out that the Gorgon's head had been lost from the statue of the goddess. Themistokles, under pretext of seeking for it, searched every man, and found great stores of money hidden in their luggage, which he confiscated, and thus was able ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... for the position she held were very different to those of my mother. In appearance she was a very Gorgon, a veritable strong-minded, double-fisted female, tall, gaunt, and coarse-featured. A hoarse laugh, and a voice which vied with the boatswain's in stentorian powers, and yet withal she was a true woman, with a gentle, loving, tender ...
— Ben Burton - Born and Bred at Sea • W. H. G. Kingston
... by this you may recognize true education from false. False education is a delightful thing, and warms you, and makes you every day think more of yourself. And true education is a deadly cold thing with a Gorgon's head on her shield, and makes you every day think ...
— Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne - Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work • John Ruskin
... light, in lurid chiaroscuro;—enlarging the whites of his eyes, and making him frown, grin, and gnash his teeth on all occasions, so as to appear among the other Apostles invariably in the aspect of a Gorgon. ...
— Giotto and his works in Padua • John Ruskin
... very dense. Suddenly a trumpet blared. At the gate was Pontius Pilate. On his head was a high and dazzling helmet. His tunic was short, open at the neck. His legs were bare. He was shod with shoes that left the toes exposed. From his cuirass a gorgon's head had, in deference to local prejudice, been effaced; in its stead were scrolls and thunderbolts. From the belt rows of straps, embroidered and fringed, fell nearly to the knee. He held his head in the air. His features were excellent, and his beard hung ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus
... who is this, who is passing round the tomb of Zethus, with clustering locks, in his eyes a Gorgon to behold, ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... for the bloody fray. Her tasselled aegis round her shoulders next She threw, with terror circled all around, And on its face were figured deeds of arms And Strife and Courage high, and panic Rout. There too a Gorgon's head of monstrous size Frown'd terrible, portent of angry Jove. . . . . . . . In her hand A spear she bore, long, weighty, tough, wherewith The mighty daughter of a mighty sire Sweeps down the ranks of those her ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement
... His broken axletrees and blunted war, And send him forth again with furbish'd arms, To wake the lazy war with trumpets' loud alarms. The rest refresh the scaly snakes that fold The shield of Pallas, and renew their gold. Full on the crest the Gorgon's head they place, With eyes that roll in death, and ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... Emily instantly forbade me to look. It is true that they were objects not often seen by bachelor man, except in shop windows and on the advertising pages of women's magazines; but silk petticoats and cobwebby lace frills have no Gorgon qualities, and I was not turned to stone by the sight of them. I even found courage to ask of the company at large if they were the sort of thing that young ladies ought to have in their wardrobes. The answer ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... at present rising strongly into consciousness, a danger inherent in this too-long contemplation of Hades; it is the danger of the Gorgon, the monster whose view turns the spectator into stone, taking away all sensation, emotion, life. The Greek sooner or later must quit Hades, and flee from its shapes; the supersensible world he must transfuse ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... we count by scores, Half-emperors and quarter-emperors, Each with his bay-leaf fillet, loose-thonged vest, Loric and low-browed Gorgon on the breast, One loves a baby face, with violets there, Violets instead of laurel in the hair, As those were all the little ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... silver-shafted queen for ever chaste, Wherewith she tamed the brinded lioness And spotted mountain-pard, but set at nought The frivolous bolt of Cupid; gods and men Feared her stern frown, and she was queen o' the woods. What was that snaky-headed Gorgon shield That wise Minerva wore, unconquered virgin, Wherewith she freezed her foes to congealed stone, But rigid looks of chaste austerity, 450 And noble grace that dashed brute violence With sudden adoration and blank awe? So dear to Heaven is saintly chastity That, when a soul is found sincerely ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... I walk the horses! I scorn't, faith: [89] I have other matters in hand: let the horses walk themselves, an they will.— [Reads.] A per se, a; t, h, e, the; o per se, o; Demy orgon gorgon.— Keep further from me, O thou illiterate and ...
— Dr. Faustus • Christopher Marlowe |
