Sphinx

a fabled animal, an invention of the ancient Egyptians, with the body and claws of a lione , and the head of a woman, or of a ram, or of a goat, all types or representations of the king, effigies of which are frequently placed before temples on each side of the approach; the most famous of the sphinxes was the one which waylaid travellers and tormented them with a riddle, which if they could not answer she devoured them, but which Oedipus answered, whereupon she threw herself into the sea. "Such a sphinx," as we are told in "Past and Present," "is this life of ours, to all men and nations. Nature, like the Sphinx, is of womanly celestial loveline and tenderne , the face and bosom of a godde , but ending in the claws and the body of a lione ... is a heavenly bride and conquest to the wise and brave, to them who can discern her behests and do them; a destroying fiend to them who cannot. Answer her riddle—Knowest thou the meaning of to-day?—it is well with thee. Answer it not; the solution for thee is a thing of teeth and claws."