ON THE PERSEUS AND MEDUSA OF BENVENUTO CELLINI.

In what fierce spasms upgathered, on the plain Medusa’s headless corpse has quivering sunk, While all the limbs of that undying trunk To their extremest joint with torture strain; But the calm visage has resumed again Its beauty,—the orbed eyelids are let down, As though a living sleep might once more crown Their placid circlets, guiltless of all pain. And Thou—is thine the spirit’s swift recoil, Which follows every deed of acted wrath, That holding in thine hand this lovely spoil, Thou dost not triumph, feeling that the breath Of life is sacred, whether it inform, Loathly or beauteous, man or beast or worm?