The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (ed. Hutchinson, 1914)/On the Medusa of Leonardo Da Vinci in the Florentine Gallery
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ON THE MEDUSA OF LEONARDO DA VINCI IN THE FLORENTINE GALLERY
[Published by Mrs. Shelley, Posthumous Poems, 1824.]
I
It lieth, gazing on the midnight sky,
Upon the cloudy mountain-peak supine;
Below, far lands are seen tremblingly;
Its horror and its beauty are divine.
Upon its lips and eyelids seems[1] to lie 5
Loveliness like a shadow, from which shine,[2]
Fiery and lurid, struggling underneath,
The agonies of anguish and of death.
It lieth, gazing on the midnight sky,
Upon the cloudy mountain-peak supine;
Below, far lands are seen tremblingly;
Its horror and its beauty are divine.
Upon its lips and eyelids seems[1] to lie 5
Loveliness like a shadow, from which shine,[2]
Fiery and lurid, struggling underneath,
The agonies of anguish and of death.
II
Yet it is less the horror than the grace
Which turns the gazer's spirit into stone, 10
Whereon the lineaments of that dead face
Are graven, till the characters be grown
Into itself, and thought no more can trace;
'Tis the melodious hue of beauty thrown
Athwart the darkness and the glare of pain,
Which humanize and harmonize the strain. 15
Yet it is less the horror than the grace
Which turns the gazer's spirit into stone, 10
Whereon the lineaments of that dead face
Are graven, till the characters be grown
Into itself, and thought no more can trace;
'Tis the melodious hue of beauty thrown
Athwart the darkness and the glare of pain,
Which humanize and harmonize the strain. 15
III
And from its head as from one body grow,
Asgrass out of a watery rock.
Hairs which are vipers, and they curl and flow
And their long tangles in each other lock, 20
And with unending involutions show
Their mailèd radiance, as it were to mock
The torture and the death within, and saw
The solid air with many a ragged jaw.
And from its head as from one body grow,
Asgrass out of a watery rock.
Hairs which are vipers, and they curl and flow
And their long tangles in each other lock, 20
And with unending involutions show
Their mailèd radiance, as it were to mock
The torture and the death within, and saw
The solid air with many a ragged jaw.
IV
And, from a stone beside, a poisonous eft 25
Peeps idly into those[3] Gorgonian eyes;
Whilst in the air a ghastly bat, bereft
Of sense, has flitted with a mad surprise
Out of the cave this hideous light had cleft,
And he comes hastening like a moth that hies 30
After a taper; and the midnight sky
Flares, a light more dread than obscurity.
And, from a stone beside, a poisonous eft 25
Peeps idly into those[3] Gorgonian eyes;
Whilst in the air a ghastly bat, bereft
Of sense, has flitted with a mad surprise
Out of the cave this hideous light had cleft,
And he comes hastening like a moth that hies 30
After a taper; and the midnight sky
Flares, a light more dread than obscurity.
V.
'Tis the tempestuous loveliness of terror;
For from the serpents gleams a brazen glare
Kindled by that inextricable error, 35
Which makes a thrilling vapour of the air
Become aand ever-shifting mirror
Of all the beauty and the terror there—
A woman's countenance, with serpent-locks,
Gazing in death on Heaven from those wet rocks. 40
'Tis the tempestuous loveliness of terror;
For from the serpents gleams a brazen glare
Kindled by that inextricable error, 35
Which makes a thrilling vapour of the air
Become aand ever-shifting mirror
Of all the beauty and the terror there—
A woman's countenance, with serpent-locks,
Gazing in death on Heaven from those wet rocks. 40