Lamia (1)

John Keats wrote about the Lamia in Lamia and Other Poems, which was based on Anatomy of Melancholy.

lava, lava lamp, mead, mail, brede

She writh`d about, convuls`d with scarlet pain:
A deep volcanian yellow took the place
Of all her milder-mooned body`s grace;
And, as the lava ravishes the mead,
Spoilt all her silver mail, and golden brede;
Made gloom of all her frecklings, streaks and bars,
Eclips`d her crescents, and lick`d up her stars:
--Lamia by John Keat

As quoted from Keats, the passage states:

Philostratus, in his fourth book Vita Appolloniith a memorable instance in this kind, which I may not omit, of one Menippus Lycius, a young man twenty-five years of age, that going betwixt Cenchreas and Corinth, met such a phantasm in the habit of a fair gentlewoman, which taking him by the hand, carried him home to her house, in the suburbs of Corinth, and told him she was a Phoenician by birth, and if he would tarry with her, he should hear her sing and play, and drink such wine as never any drank, and no man should molest him; but she, being fair and lovely, would live and die with him, that was fair and lovely to behold. The young man, a philosopher, otherwise staid and discreet, able to moderate his passions, though not this of love, tarried with her awhile to his great content, and at last married her, to whose wedding, amongst other guests, came Apollonius; who, by some probably conjectures, found her out to be a serpent, a lamia; and that all her furniture was, like Tantalus' gold, described by Homer, no substance but mere illusions. When she saw herself descried, she wept, and desired Apollonius to be silent, but he would not be moved, and therefore she, plate, house, and all that was in it, vanished in an instant: many thousands took notice of this fact, for it was done in the midst of Greece. -- Anatomy of Melancholy. Part 3, Section 2. (quoted at Matthews, ed., 165)