"Gorgon" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the yellow sand of the Libyan desert, and as Perseus flew 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 we find on sea-beaches after a storm bear ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... Cyaxares), the king of Persia. And there is a golden vase at each end of the roof, and a golden Victory in the middle of the gable. And underneath the Victory is a golden shield hung up as a votive offering, with the Gorgon Medusa worked on it. The inscription on the shield states who hung it up, and the reason why they did so. For this is what it says: "This temple's golden shield is a votive offering from the Lacedaemonians at Tanagra and their allies, a gift from the Argives, the Athenians, and the Ionians, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... of their mind, The sable bands combined, Where Fear's black banner bloats the troubled sky, Appalled retire. Suspicion hides her head, Nor dares th' obliquely gleaming eye-ball 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, ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie
... Zeus, they halted for a space, And lo, Apollo's priestess with a train Of holy maidens came into that place, And far did she outshine the rest in grace, But in her eyes such dread was frozen then As glares eternal from the Gorgon's face Wherewith Athene quells the ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang
... 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 know how ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... 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 ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... for 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 crustacean sometimes shows his nose at his door. And yet what ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... me to come to the wedding feast. I said I would come. And then, because I was young and full of the boast of youth, and because the king was now ceasing to be a terror to me, I said that I would bring to his wedding feast the head of the Gorgon. ...
— The Golden Fleece and the Heroes who Lived Before Achilles • Padraic Colum
... they fail, 'tis want of parts. Bless us! Morgan,[20] art thou there, man? Bless mine eyes! art thou the chairman? Chairman to yon damn'd committee! Yet I look on thee with pity. Dreadful sight! what, learned Morgan Metamorphosed to a Gorgon![21] For thy horrid looks, I own, Half convert me to a stone. Hast thou been so long at school, Now to turn a factious tool? Alma Mater was thy mother, Every young divine thy brother. Thou, a disobedient ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... fascination over the least revolutionary of European nations. Unfitted for scientific work and full of ardour, Mr. Carlyle found his mission in rushing with all his might to the annihilation of this terrible poet, who, like some gorgon, hydra, or chimera dire planted at the gate, carried off a yearly tale of youths and virgins from the city. In literature, only a revolutionist can thoroughly overpower a revolutionist. Mr. Carlyle had fully as much daring as Byron; his writing at its best, if without the many-eyed minuteness ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... must be view'd. His sentence he confesses strictly just. Yet sure a deed of mercy, from thy hand, Could never lead to ill. By such an act, The stern and blood-stain'd brow of War Would be disarm'd of half its gorgon horrors; More humanized customs be induced; And all the race of civilized man Be blest in the example. Be it thy suit: 'T will well become thy character ...
— Andre • William Dunlap
... 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 them ...
— Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway
... named Dictys took care of them. A 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 ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge
... despondency; despair &c. 859. fright; affright, affrightment[obs3]; boof alarm[obs3][U.S.], 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[obs3], ogre, Hurlothrumbo[obs3], 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) 485. hesitate &c. (be ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... field, And blue-eyed Pallas shook her Gorgon shield; O'er the hushed waves their mightier monarch drove, And Ida trembled to the ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... 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 ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... hell; the splendid temples in which the 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 ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... this act of substantial civility from the Gorgon. "Oh, thank you, Mrs. Undercliff," said she. "No, I am not the least afraid. Let them follow me, I am doing nothing that I am ashamed of. Indeed, I am glad I am thought worth the trouble of following. It shows me I am ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... 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
... that stood upon the brink of that stream?—A traitor, bringing war and pestilence into the heart of that country! No wonder that he paused! No wonder if, in his imagination, wrought upon by his conscience, he had beheld blood instead of water; and heard groans instead of murmurs. No wonder if some Gorgon horror had turned him into stone upon the spot.—But, no!—he cried, "The die is cast!" He plunged!—He crossed!—and Rome was free no ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... 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 of my bosom? While such whims and chimeras were ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... but will not refuse your offer. If I have not a gorgon-face this morning, it must surely be a proof of my utter insensibility, or easy belief ...
— My Ten Years' Imprisonment • Silvio Pellico
... whom I wish'd, I had beheld, Pirithoues 770 And Theseus, glorious progeny of Gods, But nations, first, numberless of the dead Came shrieking hideous; me pale horror seized, Lest awful Proserpine should thither send The Gorgon-head from Ades, sight abhorr'd! I, therefore, hasting to the vessel, bade My crew embark, and cast the hawsers loose. They, quick embarking, on the benches sat. Down the Oceanus[55] the current bore My galley, winning, at the first, her way 780 With oars, then, ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... art thou there, man! Bless mine eyes! art thou the chairman! Chairman to yon damned committee! Yet I look on thee with pity. Dreadful sight! what! learned Morgan Metamorphosed to a Gorgon? For thy horrid looks I own, Half convert me to a stone, Hast thou been so long at school, Now to turn a factious tool? Alma Mater was thy mother, Every young divine thy brother. Thou a disobedient varlet, Treat ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... 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
... Long after he was out of sight the chaplain stood fixed in the same attitude of panic-stricken, helpless despondency. By my faith! even in these degenerate days, we have petrifying influences left that may match the head of the Gorgon. ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... subjects, neither entertaining nor ornamental," against which we have already heard the painter inveigh. Upon the ceiling, with a nice sense of decorative fitness, is Pharaoh in the Red Sea. From a sconce at the side, a Gorgon surveys the proceedings with astonishment. Hogarth has used a similar idea in the Strolling Actresses, where the same mask seems horrified at the airy freedom of the lightly-clad lady who there enacts the ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... Mannering start. She was full six feet high, wore a man's greatcoat over the rest of her dress, had in her hand a goodly sloe-thorn cudgel, and in all points of equipment, except her petticoats, seemed rather masculine than feminine. Her dark elf-locks shot out like the snakes of the gorgon, between an old-fashioned bonnet called a bongrace, heightening the singular effect of her strong and weather-beaten features, which they partly shadowed, while her eye had a wild roll that indicated something like real ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... is never raised!' The world quivered under some strange anathema; a mystic malediction wreathed its thorns round the anguished heads of men; even in the midst of their festivals, when seeming to drink deep of joy from the brimming cup of life, the invisible hand of a Gorgon Fate was forever felt tracing upon their walls the decrees of a dark, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... rather out of spirits. Mr F.'s Aunt was so stiffened that she had the 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 a great boon to the younger inhabitants of the Borough, whose sallies of humour ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... 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
... will to overcome conquers even this last of fears and steels a man's nerves to face anything. The heroes of antiquity set their lances against dragons and creatures that belched forth flame and smoke—brave Perseus slew the Gorgon, and Jason the brass-hooved bulls, and St. George and many another slew his "worm." But the dragons are all dead or driven to the depths of the sea, whence they rise up to chill men's blood; and those who conquer now fight only their memory, passed down in our fear of the ...
— Wunpost • Dane Coolidge
... 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
... life for such a climax? Many men have said to Fame and Wisdom, 'Let me look upon your face and die'; many have come to view their Gorgon features and cheerfully paid the price, and still more have perished miserably ...
— Said the Observer • Louis J. Stellman
... he added ruefully, "somehow I got mixed up with the matron or whatever you call her. I thought, you see, that this was like a boarding-school, and that I'd got to have some gorgon or other vouch for me before I could see you. So I asked for her first, and she's invited me to dinner. Did you say there were thirty girls in this house? Sixty! I see ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde
... and blithe goddess of the fields, whose 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 of ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... Hope; the algazelle, and the addax and its young from North Africa; the sing-sing, and the koba from Western Africa; the sassaybi; the chamois of the Alps—the subject of many a stirring mountain song; the goats of North Africa; the strange Siberian ibex; the grue and gorgon from the Cape; varieties of the domestic goat, and the beautiful Cashmere goat. Here also are specimens of sheep, including the wild sheep from the Altai; the bearded sheep of North Africa; the American arguli; the nahorr and caprine antelopes from Nepal; and upon the higher shelves ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... troop {46} 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, ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... 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 however ludicrous mediaeval ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... 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 ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... trusted a little I think—his life and dynasty certainly. At this moment I hear from Rome of a great dinner given by Lamoriciere to his staff, or by his staff to him (I don't know which), only that the health of Henri Cinq was suggested and drunk at it. Gorgon telegraphed the news to Paris. What then? English newspapers (even such papers as the 'Daily News') have stated that Lamoriciere was doing Napoleonic business at Rome. ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... short, I never heard as much wit, except in a speech with which mr. Pitt concluded the debate t'other day on the treaties. His antagonists endeavour to disarm him, but as fast as they deprive him of one weapon, he finds a better; I never suspected him of such an universal armoury-I knew he had a Gorgon's head, composed of bayonets and pistols, but little thought that he could tickle to death with a feather. On the first debate on these famous treaties, last Wednesday, Hume Campbell, whom the Duke of Newcastle ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... 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 ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... Perseus upholding the 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 ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... Cathedine. Lady Madeleine bent lower over her book, her beautiful hair 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
... 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 own brow has been marked by the purifying angel. The reader would throw aside such a tale in incredulous ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... had suddenly 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 way it was actually a part of her life. ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... he was not 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 had the awful gloom of night. Perseus himself, the son of Danae, was at full stretch, ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... heart in my bosom burneth, My hand is ready for sword or lance, For unto me the Gorgon turneth My foeman's hateful countenance. Scarce I master the rage that assails me. Shall I salute him with fair speech? Better, perchance, my ire avails me? Only the Fury me affrighteth, Protectress of all within her reach, And God's truce which all ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume II • Gerhart Hauptmann
... you 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
... right as a trivet. As far as she is concerned, we are engaged. Her mother is perfectly unbearable. Never met such a Gorgon . . . I don't really know what a Gorgon is like, but I am quite sure that Lady Bracknell is one. In any case, she is a monster, without being a myth, which is rather unfair . . . I beg your pardon, Algy, I suppose I shouldn't talk about your ...
— The Importance of Being Earnest - A Trivial Comedy for Serious People • Oscar Wilde
... 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 ...
— Stories in Verse • Henry Abbey
... cry 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 ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... 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 of these bas-reliefs is coarse ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... cloud-compelling force And stood accoutred 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 ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement
... the fact 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 ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... wise, because 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
... perplexity and entanglement for his extrication from which he had trusted to time, good fortune, chance, and his own plotting, so filled the entrapped architect with dismay, that if Tom could have been a Gorgon staring at Mr Pecksniff, and Mr Pecksniff could have been a Gorgon staring at Tom, they could not have horrified each other half so much as ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... manner altered with my 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 ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... of gaieties, are looked forward to, as pleasures are, the wide world over; and all classes, from highest to lowest, have their modes of enjoyment marked out. Preparation follows preparation in festal succession. Sorrow hides her Gorgon head, care may betake itself to any dreary recesses, for Christmas must ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... rafters, all of solid tufa stone. A low stone seat against the wall on each hand and a small hanging lamp were all the furniture of this apartment, awful in its emptiness and mystery. On every side there were dark openings into cells whence came gleams of white, indefinite forms: a great Gorgon's head gazed at us from the ceiling, and from the walls in every direction started the crested heads and necks of sculptured serpents. We entered one by one the nine small grotto-like compartments which surround the central cavern: the white ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... 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
... 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
... dresses (she always stumbled when she was embarrassed), to the table where the Principal sat. There were six tables, twelve girls to each table, with a teacher at the head. Miss Russell greeted Peggy pleasantly, and it occurred to our friend for the first time that the Principal was not a Gorgon, but a human being, with a grave face, it is true, but with kind ...
— Peggy • Laura E. Richards
... take out her Gorgon's head in the midst, and petrify her subjects! Maybe it will be safest to prepare her. You see, such discipline reigns here, that a poor Bohemian like me doesn't know ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... beauty why did heaven impart, To please your eyes, but not to move your heart! I'll shroud this gorgon from all human view, And own no beauty, since it charms not you! Reverse your orders, and your sentence give; My soldiers shall not ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... 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 features of Fates by their doorways. The young people are very rarely ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... 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 hold out ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... 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 ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to his lips. But it is generally suggested by the hat he has already let fall over his nose, from far deeper motives. Tommy does not assume the hat primarily because it is Uncle William's hat, but because it is not Tommy's hat. It is a ritual investiture; and is akin to those Gorgon masks that stiffened the dances of Greece or those towering mitres that came from the mysteries of Persia. For the essence of such ritual is a profound paradox: the concealment of the personality combined with the exaggeration ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... translated into 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 ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... in bronze, stationed beneath the high light 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 ...
— The Madonna of the Future • Henry James
... with 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 ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... 1349, temporary quietus having come, Kurfurst Ludwig, weary of the matter, gave it over to his Brother: "Have not I an opulent Maultasche, Gorgon-Wife, susceptible to kindness, in the Tyrol; have not I in the Reich elsewhere resources, appliances?" thought Kurfurst Ludwig. And gave the thing over to his next Brother. Brother whose name also ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol, II. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Of Brandenburg And The Hohenzollerns—928-1417 • Thomas Carlyle
... husband surprises 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
... my boy. Someone here is composing, with much citation of texts, a dissertation on the Gorgon Islands: de Gorgonum insulis. Medusa, according to him, was a Libyan savage who lived near Lake Triton, our present Chott Melhrir, and it is there that Perseus ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit
... leave this accursed house, lest, prying too closely, we may find crouching in some dark corner a Gorgon, who will ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... 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 ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... suppliant's head, Dread Goddess, lay thy chastening hand! Not in thy Gorgon terrors clad, Not circled with the vengeful band (As by the impious thou art seen) With thundering voice, and threatening mien, With screaming Horror's funeral cry, Despair, and fell Disease, and ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... which, although vague and indistinct, I yet recognised but too well. It was the Ash-tree. My beauty was the Maid of the Alder! and she was giving me, spoiled of my only availing defence, into the hands of bent his Gorgon-head, and entered the cave. I could not stir. He drew near me. His ghoul-eyes and his ghastly face fascinated me. He came stooping, with the hideous hand outstretched, like a beast of prey. I had given myself up to a death of unfathomable ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... tapestry, started into life? We looked up, and there, on a rough platform of pine boards, projecting from the wall, stood our Fenella. She was leaning over the shoulder of an artist-boy, who, seated at his easel, was copying one of the Gorgon-heads that stood out on the faded tapestry. She had dismissed us wholly from her thoughts, and, giving play to her native fun and coquetry, was taunting the youth with the slowness of his labors and the little progress he had made since she last inspected his work. No wonder ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... gently on thy suppliant's head, Dread Goddess! lay thy chastening hand, Not in thy Gorgon terrors clad, Nor circled with the vengeful band: (As by the impious thou art seen), With thundering voice and threatening mien, With screaming Horror's funeral cry, Despair, and fell ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... 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
... of Egypt, meant, physically, little more than the blue of the air; but the Greek, in a climate of alternate storm and calm, represented the wild fringes of the storm-cloud by the serpents of her aegis; and the lightning and cold of the highest thunderclouds, by the Gorgon on her shield: while morally, the same types represented to him the mystery and changeful terror of knowledge, as her spear and helm its ruling and defensive power. And no study can be more interesting, or more useful to you, than that of the ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... 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
... 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, gaze intently into ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... 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 in ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... 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 in support of ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... whose muscles were like the great gnarled round heads of a beech-tree. When a man possesses that particular shape of muscle he is sure to be a hard nut to crack. And so poor PATRICKSEN found him, merely getting his own wretched back broken for his trouble. GORGON GORGONSEN Was Governor of Iceland, and lived at Reykjavik, the capital, which was not only little and hungry, but was also a creeping settlement with a face turned to America. It was a poor lame place, with its wooden feet in the sea. Altogether a strange capital. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 10, 1891 • Various
... depths, With caverns, vast and gloomy, which would seem Meet for the haunt of centaur or of gnome; The gorgon and the labyrinthodon; The clumsy mammoth and the dinosaur; Or all gigantic and unwieldy shapes Which earth has seen in the mysterious past, Would seem in more accord and harmony With such surroundings than the puny form Of ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... flourished things before my eyes, at which 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 was emphatically ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... which never yet Had yielded to the comb's unkind divorce, Their long-contracted amity forget, And spring asunder with elastic force; Nay, e'en the very cap, of texture coarse, Whose ruby cincture crown'd that brow of jet, Uprose in agony—the Gorgon's head Was but a type of ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... hath made all those sticks which the beaus have lately walked with about the Park in a morning; but this was far his masterpiece. On its head was engraved a nose and chin, which might have been mistaken for a pair of nutcrackers. The learned have imagined it designed to represent the Gorgon; but it was in fact copied from the face of a certain long English baronet, of infinite wit, humour, and gravity. He did intend to have engraved here many histories: as the first night of Captain B——'s play, where ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding
... gifts on his back and assignments for brilliant careers in his hand. To be sure here and there a gentleman was to be seen wearing a crepe-band on his sleeve for a brother or a brother-in-law who, as officer, had seen that other aspect of the war, the Gorgon's face. ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... and, without doubt, are under some mistake with regard to us." Before Peregrine had time to answer this salutation, the lady, hearing it, advanced to him, and, pulling off a mask, discovered a face which he had never seen before. The Gorgon's head, according to the fables of antiquity, never had a more instantaneous or petrifying effect, than that which this countenance produced upon the astonished youth. His eyes were fixed upon this unknown object, ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... hell, and rear'd Those artificial boundaries that divide Man from his species. State of blessedness! Till that ill-omen'd hour when Cain's stern son Delved in the bowels of the earth for gold, Accursed bane of virtue! of such force As poets feign dwelt in the Gorgon's locks, Which whoso saw, felt instant the life-blood Cold curdle in his veins, the creeping flesh Grew stiff with horror, and the heart forgot To beat. Accursed hour! for man no more To JUSTICE paid his homage, but forsook Her altars, and bow'd ...
— Poems, 1799 • Robert Southey
... it!" said 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 turn ...
— Margaret Montfort • Laura E. Richards
... so delicately and so aristocratically entempled in that 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
... 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 part of the story, though the Life Token has disappeared, and the Supernatural Birth only applies to the hero and not to his animal companions. In the modern European folk-tales these animal friends are rather supernumeraries and are occasionally replaced by the ...
— Europa's Fairy Book • Joseph Jacobs
... then the last), it hurt me less 160 Than to behold my boy and my boy's mother Excluded in their innocence from what My faults deserved-exclusion; although then My passions were all living serpents,[161] and Twined like the Gorgon's round me. [A loud knocking ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron |
