7o The Poets and Nature. 



once so beautiful that gods wooed her, afterwards so dread- 

 ful that the mere sight of her face terrified men into stone 

 a notable illustration of "disastrous love" and of the 

 malignity of female revenge. Temples, no doubt, ought to 

 be respected, but whenever I think of Medusa's fate and 

 her "fearful head" with its "crested" snakes, my opinion 

 of Poseidon is not complimentary to that amphibious 

 divinity. 



Next, the assailants of Laocoon, immortalised in noble 

 epic and almost as noble marble : 



" Round sire and sons the scaly monsters rolled 

 Ring above ring, in many a tangled fold ; 

 Close, and more close, their writhing limbs surround, 

 And fix with foaming teeth the envenomed wound." 



' Or, turning to the Vatican, go see 

 Laocoon's torture dignifying pain 

 A father's love and mortal's agony 

 With an immortal's patience blending : Vain 

 The struggle ; vain, against the coiling strain 

 And gripe, and deepening of the dragon's grasp, 

 The old man's clench ; the long envenom'd chain 

 Rivets the living links, the enormous asp 

 Enforces pang on pang, and stifles gasp on gasp." Byron. 



' At last her utmost Masterpieces she found, 

 That Maro fir'd ; the miserable sire, 

 Wrapt with his sons in Fate's severest grasp. 

 The serpents, twisting round, their stringent folds 

 Inextricable tie. Such passion here, 

 Such agonies, such bitterness of pain, 

 Seem so to tremble through the tortur'd stone, 

 That the touch'd heart engrosses all the view. 

 Almost unmask'd the best proportions pass, 

 That ever Greece beheld ; and, seen alone, 

 On the rapt eye th' imperious passions seize : 

 The father's double pangs, both for himself 

 And sons convuls'd ; to Heaven his rueful look, 

 Imploring aid, and half-accusing, cast; 

 His fell despair with indignation mixt, 

 As the strong-curling monsters from his side 

 His full-extended fury cannot tear. 



