University of Virginia Library

MEDEA

A TRAGEDY OF JEALOUSY

Medea
Why dost thou wrong and shame me more each day?
What have I done to merit this disdain?
Declare the measure of my injuries;
Publish my fault, O perjured; ere I cry
To Zeus, that presently he cleave thy brain
With one keen hissing bundle of blue fire;
And Artemis may heave her spear on me,
If I be found unfaithful in her sight
By one least errant thought to this hard man!
Thine answer, king, thy reason; say them soon.

The King
Nay, for I will not answer; get her in,
Who was a queen and is a Mænad now,
A raving woman smitten with wild gods;
A Pythoness in wreaths of sulphur fume,
Perplexed with inward voices terrible—
Is this a royal fashion to bewail,
To ring out curses wildly in the air,
To entreat and clench numb fingers in the dust?
Roll up thy Bacchanalian hair; begone!

Chorus
In ashes she has laid her shining head;
Give her the answer of a little word;
Leave wrath to Zeus and to his gods revenge:
Indeed, she is angry, broken, dumb with sighs!

Medea
With sighs I think that I have nearly done,
With grief and seed of sighs and fruit of tears,
Done with the earth crowned over with blown woods,
Done with her shadowed vales and sleepy fields,
With the wave rocking and high glorious stars—
I have concluded surely with them all;
And in my distance only one dark gate,
Rent in the rock and fringed with deadly yew,
Invites my lonely feet. I will descend,
Laden with many curses at thy hand,
Along its blind and miserable road,
Hollow, uneven, rugged, arduous,
Into that realm, where Love and wrong of him
Seem like our tears in childhood. I will go;
Let railing cease and trivial anger fall.
I will obey my tyrant and depart.
Yet one small bitter word I mean to speak
Under my breath, not very loud or wild,
Yet some far god will hear it in his heaven;
And see thou to it, king, if answer come.

Chorus
Revere, O king, her curse and answer it;
Curses are strong; they climb as ravens up
Vexing the easy and complacent gods,
To feed them and fulfil them; inmost heaven
Is weary with their wail and sounding wings;
The drowsy brows of the eternal ones
Move in their rest to frown and sleep again;
Till the great angry Zeus shall prop himself
Wide-eyed upon his elbow, roused at last,
And toss a plague upon thy realm and thee,
To have about him quiet heaven again.
Therefore, O king, be mild and give reply,
Nor stand apart with dull eyes on the ground,
And dumb hard lips. But royally she comes
To speak and raises out her angry arms.

Medea
Ye damsels of this land, when I am dead,
Search me some grave secluded; where the step
Of that light foolish woman, whom he loves,
May never beat mine ashes. Here engrave
Around my tomb in yellow characters
The fair deeds of this hero to his spouse.
How for a season with man's fickle love
He gave me adoration as his queen;
And loved me fairly once—as these men love!
The sorrow of my kingdom faded me;
To be at once a mother and a queen
Is care enough, and beauty wanes in care.
Then he began to scorn my haggard eyes,
And found their light no longer eloquent;
For many watchings at the cradle head
Drew dimness, where love's glory used to burn—
At least he said so once. All that is gone!
So, of this pale face weary, he found one
More rosy to his mind, a captive wench,
Silly enough and fresh enough to please
The veering tyrant. Folded in my robes,
She struts about the palace at his side,
Aping the queen with gestures of the plough;
And my unstable hand-maids bow to her
When he is near, and mock her when he goes;
Help as they are to none, weak water-waves,
That point their heads as each wind pushes them.
And me they counsel to wink hard at this,
Ignoring my desertion, to look sweet
And speak him smooth, and, hypocrite, refrain,
Until this alien fancy's turn is done;
And then to kiss and make it up again.
Ah, God, not so. I will be all with him
Or nothing; no dumb slave with pleasant lips,
While glowing embers at her bosom's core
Eat out her heart. O perjured husband, nay,—
I, firm in this my wife-hood, a chaste bride,
In old love blameless, choose not to survive
This infamy of wedlock; so I wend
Beneath the mighty darkness all alone,
Unreconciled and homeless. As my home
Is the new Love's to rule in, and my lord
Glooms on his children as a step-father
Turned by this rose-red fool against his own;
And I pray Zeus to bring into my brain
Strong words and bitter potency of curse,
Against my marriage bed and its ill fruit,
That I may blare them out and die at ease.

Chorus
Strong is thy seat, O monarch, as the sun;
And what is weaker than a woman's tear?
Yet rear her from the ground. The ancient gods
Are fickle if one prosper overmuch;
Calamity has broken many thrones.

King
Why this is brave; must I a king endure
The windy ravings of a woman's ire,
Must I teach reason to her, mad with whims?
Must a king bend his eyes into his cloak,
And give no maiden greeting in the street?
Must he go dumbly, tied to one queen's heels,
Where she in strings may lead him up and down,
A craven laughter to the market-wives
Above their baskets? Threat me not with Zeus,
He has a railing queen to curb at home;
Call thou on Hêrê; Zeus will help thee none,
He is well sick of married jealousies.

Medea
Thy word is well, and so shall rise my prayer
I will indeed entreat this Zeus no more;
I will call up beyond him to a god
Mightier than he, a shadow dimly known,—

Chorus
Refrain, O queen, for awful words are these:
I veil my head in fear as they are said.

Medea
O thou beyond the darkness and the cloud,
How can I make my call, how bring my prayer?
Can I appeal, strange even to thy name?
Are not these very weak words that I speak
Wrung from my heart like blood, tear after tear?
Wilt thou, O terrible, hear any one?
Are our tears pleasant, is our bleeding sweet
Before thee? Are the striving, and the void,
The throb, and this blind reaching out of hands,
Excellent music or unheeded noise?
Thou hast made Love, else hadst thou nothing made;
Else had the unformed silence still endured,—
Is not Love rightly cruel as thy self?
Love thou hast made, and beautiful it is,
A dream of many lights and shaken waters,
Excellent, unenduring, human Love!

Chorus
It is a dreadful daring to beat out
New roads of prayer. So many gods are known,
Eager of knees, of kine insatiable.
In every field a flameless altar stands
Greedy of sacrifice. Ah, kindle one.
Numberless temples glisten in the groves,
The thrones in roomy heaven are full of gods;
Choose and invoke one hand of many arms
Able to pluck thee from thy coil of storms.
Let some god of thy fathers oar thy soul
To haven. Hold thy fingers on thy teeth;
Offer no incense to this nameless one.
Dumb lips indeed were aid as good as his,
And silence the best censer in thy palm.
Fate and not God has made thy path to bear
Flint at thy soles and at thy instep briers.

King
She is full of dreams and rumours and reproof,
She is folded in the bands of bitter pride;
Hard-eyed as death, as unpersuadable,
Deaf to the deaf winds let her wail aloud—
In this thy storm remember thou art queen.
The fury of thy anger overthrows
Thine honour and my patience. Are thy wrongs,
If any, sweeter for unrolling them
Here in broad day before a herd of slaves?
If thou be wounded tend thy hurt at home.
If woe be come on thee, it rightly came;
Yet here I tell no reasons why it grew,
Being a king and guarding my reserve.
Then, on thine honour, which, O queen, is mine,
Control this common phrenzy, and return
Indoors; upon thy duty as a spouse,
By thy maternal love, I charge thee—Go!

Medea
Let me be very patient and most meek—
Consider this, ye women, mark it well;
He, even this man perjured, prates of love,
Is wounded in his honour, finds me slack
In wifely duty; come, complete my wrong
And make it perfect; bring thy paramour
Here in my face to teach me how I fail.
This toy of milk and rosebuds, this new girl
Without a purpose and without a soul,
Save to live sleek and whiten her smooth skin,
The slavish plaything of a banquet hour.
Why she would never stand an hour in the rain
To serve the man who loved her; ay, and men
Have fallen to such loving, pure men too—
If she presume to school me in my love,
My soul, let us be patient even in this.
The shadow of the blood which I have shed,
The tumult of the years that I have ruled,
Have never touched her in her rose-garden.
She cannot dream the woman that I am,
This doll fit only to be kissed and fed,
To chide and chatter, pout and start aside
At the first trumpet-note of danger and death,
Screaming and useless, tossed as lumber by.
Then, as thou reachest for thy spear, my Lord,
Wilt thou find counsel at her pretty lips?
Toss her away till thou hast stemmed the storm,
Then, if thou wilt, return and kiss again
Her cheeks to colour. Surely she is meet
To be a hero's wife. O stars of god,
I have known many women brave and pure,
Worthy of kings and wifedom, true and leal;
And in their number she will never come;
Slave, if thou wilt, and concubine enough,
Not wife nor near it. Else this feeble trash
Would shame us out of wifehood with her fears.
Yet, O my Lord, my only Love, my King,
Altho' the light I found in thy dear eyes
Wanes, and thou standest ever coldly apart;
Tho' to my dumb entreating hands and eyes
I gain no answer. Tho' the father's face
Harden against our children. Tho' I lose
Thy presence day by day, and evermore
Thou makest any pretext to begone—
Still let me nurse once more my child to rest,
As in old days beside thee; one swift hour
Endure me; make pretence that all is well,
Lest the child suffer; sit with me a little
Just now and then. I am old, I know, and faded,
I never had much youth! Our years have been
So stormy; husband, how you loved me then!
How sweet it was to tread the brinks of death,
One will between us. O we went so firmly:
I felt thy hand upon my hand, and fear
Became a laughter. Thro' the smoke of death,
The dragon land, the fiery deeps of blood,
I saw one face—my husband's—and went on,
As tho' I felt the daisies at my feet
In meadow places under quiet woods.
It is my glory to have been thy mate,
Not idle, but another living brain
Building thy throne beside thee, night and day;
In rumours of conspiracy, in hours
Of chidden armies, still at thy right hand
Undaunted; when rebellion, bolt by bolt,
Played round our royal heads to tear us down;
Did I quail then, did I seem pitiful?
Not so, men said, this woman is all steel,
But they were wrong, I was all love; no more.
My husband was my law and law-giver,
And righteous any deed that helped him best.
I bathed my hands in carnage and was glad;
For every stain of blood upon my robes
Had seated him securer on his throne,
Who was my sun in heaven, my oracle,
My breath, my soul, my justice. Hear me now,
When the long dark is ready for my feet;
Love, husband, master, king, almost my God,
In whose dear service my whole life a slave
Has bent herself adoring. I required
Only a little love as my reward;
On this my soul was nourished, only on this—
Now he despises, scorns, and spits at me;
Smiles on that other woman, whom he loves,
And clothes her in all glory, once my own;
Whereby I weep all night, and only rise
To tears—tears—tears; and I discern no end,
Save the cold common grave where I descend.

Semi-chorus
The sullen king turns roughly on his heel,
Whirling his regal mantle round his eyes,
And so departs with slow steps, obstinate.
Ah, but the queen, the pale one, beautiful,
Prone, in the dust her holy bosom laid,
Mingles her out-spread hair with fallen leaves,
And sandal-soil is on her gracious head.
Ah, lamentable lady, pitiful!
On to an altar in the palace court
She, crawling, interlaces nerveless hands.
Attend, her lips are twitching into prayer;
Listen, indeed there is no sound in them,
Only a choking murmur unlike words.
Bring out her children here, unclasp her arms
And raise her. It is done. The babies lie,
Smiling up into her hard vacant eyes,
One playing with her hair. But she stares on
In ecstasy, and cannot tell her own.
O miserable mother! bring her in;
Since I discern the storm-drops on these flags,
And clouds are rough with thunder overhead.

Chorus