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.
Studies
