Her sleeping head with its great gelid mass
	of serpents torpidly astir
burned into the mirroring shield--
	a scathing image dire
as hated truth the mind accepts at last
	and festers on.
I struck. The shield flashed bare.

Yet even as I lifted up the head
	and started from that place
of gazing silences and terrored stone,
	I thirsted to destroy.
None could have passed me then--
	no garland-bearing girl, no priest
or staring boy--and lived.