Epithalamion (poem) was charmed by Orpheus, and allowed Eurydice to travel back up to Earth under one condition: Orpheus must walk in front of Eurydice and not look back at her the entire trip. Anxiety got the best of Orpheus, and right when they reached Earth he looked back, forgetting that they both needed to be in the upper world and that Eurydice was not in it. Eurydice was lost a second time forever. Spenser uses the myth to insist he would do anything for his bride. Even travel to the underworld. Spenser states his love will echo for all to hear,
The Stress of Her Regard beings as having qualities of vampires, succubi, incubi, Lamia, fairies, and jinn. Not only predators but sometimes benefactors of humans, they are the basis for both the Muses and the Graeae. The novel's title is taken from the poem "Sphinx and Medusa" by Clark Ashton Smith ("...Yet thought must see/That eve of time when man no longer yearns,/Grown deaf before Life's Sphinx, whose lips are barred;/When from the spaces of Eternity,/Silence, a rigorous Medusa, turns/On the lost world the stress of her regard."). The story begins shortly before the wedding of Michael Crawford, a doctor. The night before he marries