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The Spike or Victoria College Review 1936

Medusa

page 24

Medusa

["The jelly-fish (Medusa) is com[unclear: po]unded almost entirely of sea-water. . . . This mass of water, combined in a sort of web, makes up an animal with appetites and passions, with power to capture and consume its prey." —Dominion.]

Cold jelly, we see you and wonder
Pale ghost of the fathomless deep,
That hauntest the sea-forest under
Like one in an opiate sleep:
Medusa, the mystic and mighty
Weird warden of coral and cave:
O born like the famed Aphrodite
From foam of the wave!

Are you cold as the ice you resemble,
Yet fierce as the fire in the grass?
The flounders in fear of you tremble
And polyps grow pale as you pass.
Of feeling and pity art void all?
Against thee, are tears no avail
Thou art hard as the flint, though colloidal;
Black-hearted, though pale.

O pitiless pallid Thallassian!
Though little you be to desire,
You know then the pulses of passion
The flame of the amorous fire?
The lovers who yield to your kissing
Your fearful propinquity dare
Do they quail, at the sound of the hissing
Of snakes in your hair?

Thy semi-diaphanous blisses
Thy victims allure to distress,
To the pain of thy poisonous kisses,
The pangs of thy cruel caress;
They are slain by their subtle seducer
By tentacles drawn to their doom
Thou art made but for murder, Medusa,
To kill and consume.

—H.W.G.