The Witch of Atlas

  

 

From Thomas Medwin's Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley, p. 156:

"Shelley had commenced a story, and in the midst of it, worked up to an extraordinarily painful pitch, was compelled to break the thread of his narration, by a hasty retreat. Some of the party followed him, and found him in a trance of horror, and when called upon after it was overpast, to explain the cause, he said that he had had a vision of a beautiful woman, who was leaning over the balustrade of a staircase, and looking down on him with four eyes, two of which were in the centre of her uncovered breasts. Proving that he had not frogotten this vision—in The Witch of Atlas, he after made use of the epithet bosom-eyed."

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