In this poem Medusa is described as if she were actually present to the observer. Shelley, tries to represent feminine beauty and magnificence through darkness and death. In the first line of the poem it says "It lieth, gazing on the midnight sky", which refers to Medusa, who wasn't looking at Perseus when he decapitated her, but rather, was looking up at the sky. Shelley goes on to say "Below, far lands are seen tremblingly; Its horror and its beauty are divine" which is referring to Perseus looking down at Medusa's face, seeing both the beauty and horror of it. In the second stanza Shelley says "Yet it is less the horror than the grace which turns the gazer's spirit into stone," meaning that the "gazer's spirit" is turned into stone, instead of his actual body, because of the violence of the beheading. The poem is a description of the Gorgon's features as well as personality. For example, Shelley says "thought no more can trace" which can refer to Medusa's way of tricking and seducing her victims away from reason. Shelley incorporates music and vision (melodious hue of beauty) and sense and sight ("the glare of pain"). Besides imagery, the main literary devices used by Shelley includes metaphors, similes, personification, and figurative language. One example of these is "glare of pain", which is figurative language because glares don't actually hurt physically. Throughout the poem Shelley uses his diction and syntax to show imagery, and he writes in such a way that makes the poem formal and gives it a Shakespearean quality.