Thou, too, art grieved thyself, and sharest in my sorrow.
MEDEA. Be well assured I am; but it relieves my pain to know thou canst not mock at me.
JASON. O my children, how vile a mother ye have found!
MEDEA. My sons, your father’s feeble lust has been your ruin!
JASON. ’Twas not my hand, at any rate, that slew them.
MEDEA. No, but thy foul treatment of me, and thy new marriage.
JASON. Didst think that marriage cause enough to murder them?
MEDEA. Dost think a woman counts this a trifling injury?
JASON. So she be self-restrained; but in thy eyes all is evil.
MEDEA. Thy sons are dead and gone. That will stab thy heart.
JASON. They live, methinks, to bring a curse upon thy head.
MEDEA. The gods know, whoso of them began this troublous coil.
JASON. Indeed, they know that hateful heart of thine.
MEDEA. Thou art as hateful. I am aweary of thy bitter tongue.
JASON. And I likewise of thine. But parting is easy.
MEDEA. Say how; what am I to do? for I am fain as thou to go.
JASON. Give up to me those dead, to bury and lament.
MEDEA. No, never! I will bury them myself, bearing them to Hera’s sacred field, who watches o’er the Cape, that none of their foes may insult them by pulling down their tombs; and in this land of Sisyphus I will ordain hereafter a solemn feast and mystic rites to atone for this impious murder. Myself will now to the land of Erechtheus, to dwell with Aegeus, Pandion’s son. But thou, as well thou mayst, shalt die a caitiff’s death, thy head crushed ’neath a shattered relic of Argo, when thou hast seen the bitter ending of my marriage.
JASON. The curse of our sons’ avenging spirit and of justice, that calls for blood, be on thee!
MEDEA. What god or power divine hears thee, breaker of oaths and every law of hospitality?
JASON. Fie upon thee! cursed witch! child-murderess!
MEDEA. To thy house! go, bury thy wife.
JASON. I go, bereft of both my sons.
MEDEA. Thy grief is yet to come; wait till old age is with thee too.
JASON. O my dear, dear children!
MEDEA. Dear to their mother, not to thee.
JASON. And yet thou didst slay them?
MEDEA. Yea, to vex thy heart.
JASON. One last fond kiss, ah me! I fain would on their lips imprint.
MEDEA. Embraces now, and fond farewells for them; but then a cold repulse!
JASON. By heaven I do adjure thee, let me touch their tender skin.
MEDEA. No, no! in vain this word has sped its flight.
JASON. O Zeus, dost hear how I am driven hence; dost mark the treatment I receive from this she-lion, fell murderess of her young? Yet so far as I may and can, I raise for them a dirge, and do adjure the gods to witness how thou hast slain my sons, and wilt not suffer me to embrace or bury their dead bodies. Would I had never begotten them to see thee slay them after all!
[The chariot carries MEDEA away.]
CHORUS. [chanting.] Many a fate doth Zeus dispense, high on his Olympian throne; oft do the gods bring things to pass beyond man’s expectation; that, which we thought would be, is not fulfilled, while for the unlooked-for god finds out a way; and such hath been the issue of this matter.
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