able existence. Thus are described the horror and the grace of her features in death: It lieth, gazing on the midnight sky, Its horror and its beauty are divine. Yet it is less the horror than the grace Which turns the gazer's spirit into stone; Are graven, till the characters be grown Which humanize and harmonize the strain.1 § 136. Perseus and Atlas. - From the body of Medusa sprang the winged horse Pegasus, of whose rider, Bellerophon, we shall presently be informed. After the slaughter of Medusa, Perseus, bearing with him the head. of the Gorgon, flew far and wide, over land and sea. As night came on, he reached the western limit of the earth, and would gladly have rested till morning. Here was the realm of Atlas, whose bulk surpassed that of all other men. He was rich in flocks and herds; but his chief pride was his garden of the Hesperi des, whose fruit was of gold, hanging from golden branches, 1 From Shelley's lines On the Medusa of Leonardo Da Vinci in the Florentine Gallery. half hid with golden leaves. Perseus said to him, "I come as a guest. If thou holdest in honor illustrious descent, I claim Jupiter for my father; if mighty deeds, I plead the conquest of the Gorgon. I seek rest and food." But Atlas, remembering an ancient prophecy that had warned him against a son of Jove who should one day rob him of his golden apples, attempted to thrust the youth out. Whereupon Perseus, finding the giant too strong for him, held up the Gorgon's head. Atlas, with all his bulk, was changed into stone. His beard and hair became forests, his arms and shoulders cliffs, his head a summit, and his bones rocks. Each part increased in mass till the giant became the mountain upon whose shoulders rests heaven with all its stars. $137. Perseus and Andromeda. - On his way back to Seriphus, the Gorgon-slayer arrived at the country of the Æthiopians, over whom Cepheus was king. His wife was Cassiopea "That starred Æthiop queen that strove To set her beauty's praise above The sea-nymphs, and their powers offended." 1 These nymphs had consequently sent a sea-monster to ravage the coast. To appease the deities, Cepheus was directed by the oracle to devote his daughter Andromeda to the ravening maw of the prodigy. As Perseus looked down from his aërial height, he beheld the virgin chained to a rock. Drawing nearer, he pitied, then comforted her, and sought the reason of her disgrace. At first from modesty she was silent; but when he repeated his questions, for fear she might be thought guilty of some offence which she dared not tell, she disclosed her name and that of her country, and her mother's pride of beauty. Before she had done speaking, a sound was heard upon the water, and the monster appeared. The virgin shrieked; the father and mother, who had now arrived, poured forth lamentations and threw their arms about the victim. But the hero, himself, undertook to slay the monster, on condition that, if the maiden were rescued by his valor, she should 1 Milton, Il Penseroso, l. 19. be his reward. The parents consented. Perseus embraced his promised bride; then Loosing his arms from her waist he flew upward, awaiting the sea-beast. Lazily breasting the ripple, and watching by sandbar and headland, The youth darted down upon the back of the monster, and plunged his sword into its shoulder, then eluded its furious attack by means of his wings. Wherever he could find a passage for his sword, he plunged it between the scales of flank and side. The wings of the hero were finally drenched and unmanageable with the blood and water that the brute spouted. Then alighting on a rock and holding by a projection, he gave the monster his deathblow. The joyful parents, with Perseus and Andromeda, repaired to the palace, where a banquet was opened for them. But in the midst of the festivities, a noise was heard of warlike clamor; and Phineus, who had formerly been betrothed to the bride, burst in demanding her for his own. In vain, Cepheus remonstrated that all such engagements had been dissolved by the sentence of death passed upon Andromeda, and that if Phineus had actually loved the girl, he would have tried to rescue her. Phineus and his adherents, persisting in their intent, attacked the wedding party, and would have broken it up with most admired disorder, but Mid the fabled Libyan bridal stood Half stood, half floated on his ankle-plumes 1 From Charles Kingsley's Andromeda. 2 Milman's Samor. |