Melusine
"The sinuous muscle of her monster tail
Beating the lambent bath to diamond-fine
Refracting lines of spray, a dancing veil
Of heavier water on the breathless air
How lovely-white her skin her Lord knew well,
The tracery of blue veins across the snow....
But could not see the beauty in the sheen
Of argent scale and slate-blue coiling fin...."
"And what was she, the Fairy Melusine?
Were these her kin, Echidna's gruesome brood,
Scaly devourers, or were those her kind
More kind, those rapid wanderers of the dark
Who in dreamlight, or twilight, or no light
Are lovely Mysteries and promise gifts--
Whiteladies, teasing dryads, shape-changers--
Like smiling clouds, or sparkling threads of streams
Bright monsters of the sea and of the sky
Who answer longing and who threaten not
But vanish in the light of the rational day
Doomed by their own desire for human souls,
For settled hearths and fixèd human homes."
~Christabel LaMotte, 'The Fairy Melusine'
(A.S. Byatt, Possession)
The Enchantress
Arthur Wardle
The Kiss of the Enchantress
Isobel Lilian Gloag"She was a gordian shape of dazzling hue,
Vermilion-spotted, golden, green, and blue;
Striped like a zebra, freckled like a pard,
Eyed like a peacock, and all crimson barr’d;
And full of silver moons, that, as she breathed,
Dissolv’d, or brighter shone, or interwreathed
Their lustres with the gloomier tapestries-
So rainbow-sided, touch’d with miseries,
She seem’d, at once, some penanced lady elf,
Some demon’s mistress, or the demon’s self.
Upon her crest she wore a wannish fire
Sprinkled with stars, like Ariadne’s tiar:
Her head was serpent, but ah, bitter-sweet!
She had a woman’s mouth with all its pearls complete:
And for her eyes: what could such eyes do there
But weep, and weep, that they were born so fair?
As Proserpine still weeps for her Sicilian air.
Her throat was serpent, but the words she spake
Came, as through bubbling honey, for Love’s sake..."
~John Keats, 'Lamia'
*
I've been encountering serpent women simply everywhere this afternoon. Tis a strange occurence. I went to Artmagick in search of a particular Jane Austen-inspired Edmund Leighton painting, and happened to chance across the Gloag (one of my favorite Symbolist works). That put me in mind of Keats with its obvious Le Belle Dame overtones, and of course Possession was already in the air after that little diatribe of mine this morning...The Wardle isn't strictly on topic, but it's so gorgeous I couldn't bear to leave it out. Ye Gods, a half naked woman, irises, and leopards! You can't get more Decadent than that. Worthy of Balzac or Baudelaire, surely.
Beating the lambent bath to diamond-fine
Refracting lines of spray, a dancing veil
Of heavier water on the breathless air
How lovely-white her skin her Lord knew well,
The tracery of blue veins across the snow....
But could not see the beauty in the sheen
Of argent scale and slate-blue coiling fin...."
"And what was she, the Fairy Melusine?
Were these her kin, Echidna's gruesome brood,
Scaly devourers, or were those her kind
More kind, those rapid wanderers of the dark
Who in dreamlight, or twilight, or no light
Are lovely Mysteries and promise gifts--
Whiteladies, teasing dryads, shape-changers--
Like smiling clouds, or sparkling threads of streams
Bright monsters of the sea and of the sky
Who answer longing and who threaten not
But vanish in the light of the rational day
Doomed by their own desire for human souls,
For settled hearths and fixèd human homes."
~Christabel LaMotte, 'The Fairy Melusine'
(A.S. Byatt, Possession)
The Enchantress
Arthur Wardle
The Kiss of the Enchantress
Isobel Lilian Gloag"She was a gordian shape of dazzling hue,
Vermilion-spotted, golden, green, and blue;
Striped like a zebra, freckled like a pard,
Eyed like a peacock, and all crimson barr’d;
And full of silver moons, that, as she breathed,
Dissolv’d, or brighter shone, or interwreathed
Their lustres with the gloomier tapestries-
So rainbow-sided, touch’d with miseries,
She seem’d, at once, some penanced lady elf,
Some demon’s mistress, or the demon’s self.
Upon her crest she wore a wannish fire
Sprinkled with stars, like Ariadne’s tiar:
Her head was serpent, but ah, bitter-sweet!
She had a woman’s mouth with all its pearls complete:
And for her eyes: what could such eyes do there
But weep, and weep, that they were born so fair?
As Proserpine still weeps for her Sicilian air.
Her throat was serpent, but the words she spake
Came, as through bubbling honey, for Love’s sake..."
~John Keats, 'Lamia'
*
I've been encountering serpent women simply everywhere this afternoon. Tis a strange occurence. I went to Artmagick in search of a particular Jane Austen-inspired Edmund Leighton painting, and happened to chance across the Gloag (one of my favorite Symbolist works). That put me in mind of Keats with its obvious Le Belle Dame overtones, and of course Possession was already in the air after that little diatribe of mine this morning...The Wardle isn't strictly on topic, but it's so gorgeous I couldn't bear to leave it out. Ye Gods, a half naked woman, irises, and leopards! You can't get more Decadent than that. Worthy of Balzac or Baudelaire, surely.