Day: Feb 15, 2026

How writing poetry was compared to Perseus killing the Medusa Gorgon

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When thy song is shield and mirror

To the fair snake-curlèd Pain,

Where thou dar’st affront her terror

That on her thou may’st attain Perséan conquest

Francis Thompson wrote those lines.. se below

I am interested in these lines from the poem below…. When thy song is shield and mirror To the fair snake-curlèd Pain, Where thou dar’st affront her terror That on her thou may’st attain Perséan conquest; I think the meaning is that by expressing what is in us creatively in poetry or other forms we can overcome what we are afraid of not by attacking and killing it but indirectly in the manner of Perseus who killed the Medusa Gorgon by locating her and seeing her reflected in the mirror of his shield.Others had been turned to stone by her gaze. Expression is the mirror/shield Read about Perseus below http://www.greekmythology.com/Myths/Heroes/Perseus/perseus.html This is where I got the poem………Bartleby.com a good website re which I say go visit. Nicholson & Lee, eds. The Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse. 1917. 240. From ‘The Mistress of Vision’ By Francis Thompson (1859–1907) WHERE is the land of Luthany, Where is the tract of Elenore? I am bound therefor. ‘Pierce thy heart to find the key; With thee take 5 Only what none else would keep; Learn to dream when thou dost wake, Learn to wake when thou dost sleep. Learn to water joy with tears, Learn from fears to vanquish fears; 10 To hope, for thou dar’st not despair, Exult, for that thou dar’st not grieve; Plough thou the rock until it bear; Know, for thou else couldst not believe; Lose, that the lost thou may’st receive; 15 Die, for none other way canst live. When earth and heaven lay down their veil, And that apocalypse turns thee pale; When thy seeing blindeth thee To what thy fellow-mortals see; 20 When their sight to thee is sightless; Their living, death; their light, most lightless; Search no more— Pass the gates of Luthany, tread the region Elenore.’ Where is the land of Luthany, 25 And where the region Elenore? I do faint therefor. ‘When to the new eyes of thee All things by immortal power, Near or far, 30 Hiddenly To each other linkèd are, That thou canst not stir a flower Without troubling of a star; When thy song is shield and mirror 35 To the fair snake-curlèd Pain, Where thou dar’st affront her terror That on her thou may’st attain Perséan conquest; seek no more, O seek no more! 40 Pass the gates of Luthany, tread the region Elenore.

In the light

Oh holy light that held me in your gaze

That spoke to me in words without a sound

A holy light, a person hidden away

I did not seek and yet I have been found.

When I was trapped alone with my  numbed heart

When nobody could touch me with their hand

When in bleak despair I sat apart

By your holy light I have been found.

Although you did not speak I heard your words

I heard them all and yet there was no noise

How did you convey them so I heard?

The senses were conjoined, became one voice

I thought I was near death and yet I lived

Despair is long yet graceful are its gifts.

From Humboldt’s gift:Sloth [Author Saul Bellow]

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“Some think that sloth, one of the capital sins, means ordinary laziness,” I began. “Sticking in the mud. Sleeping at the switch. But sloth has to cover a great deal of despair. Sloth is really a busy condition, hyperactive. This activity drives off the wonderful rest or balance without which there can be no poetry or art or thought — none of the highest human functions. These slothful sinners are not able to acquiesce in their own being, as some philosophers say. They labor because rest terrifies them. The old philosophy distinguished between knowledge achieved by effort (ratio) and knowledge received (intellectus) by the listening soul that can hear the essence of things and comes to understand the marvelous. But this calls for unusual strength of soul. The more so since society claims more and more of your inner self and infects you with its restlessness. It trains you in distraction, colonizes consciousness as fast as consciousness advances.The true poise of contemplation or imagination, sits right on the border of sleep and dreaming. ……….and hoping for redemption by art, I fell into a deep snooze that lasted for year.