THE BOOK WAS DRENCHED - OUDL Home

FIRST SON (within)
Ah, me; what can I do? Whither fly to escape my mother's blows?
SECOND SON (within)
I know not, sweet brother mine; we are lost.
CHORUS (chanting)
Didst hear, didst hear the children's cry? O lady, born to sorrow,
victim of an evil fate! Shall I enter the house? For the children's sake
I am resolved to ward off the murder.
FIRST SON (within)
Yea, by heaven I adjure you; help, your aid is needed.
SECOND SON (within)
Even now the toils of the sword are closing round us.
CHORUS (chanting)
0 hapless mother, surely thou hast a heart of stone or steel to slay
the offspring of thy womb by such a murderous doom. Of all the
wives of yore I know but one who laid her hand upon her children
dear, even Ino, whom the gods did madden in the day that the wife
of Zeus drove her wandering from her home. But she, poor sufferer,
flung herself into the sea because of the foul murder of her children,
leaping o'er the wave-beat cliff, and in her death was she united to
her children twain. Can there be any deed of horror left to follow this?
Woe for the wooing of women fraught with disaster! What sorrows
hast thou caused for men ere now!
(JASON and his attendants enter,)
JASON
Ladies, stationed near this house, pray tell me is the author of these
hideous deeds, Medea, still within, or hath she fled from hence? For she
must hide beneath the earth or soar on wings towards heaven's vault, if
she would avoid the vengeance of the royal house. Is she so sure she will
escape herself unpunished from this house, when she hath slain the rulers
of the land? But enough of this! I am forgetting her children. As for her,
those whom she hath wronged will do the like by her; but I am come to
save the children's life, lest the victim's kin visit their wrath on me, in
vengeance for the murder foul, wrought by my children's mother.
LEADER OF THE CHORUS
Unhappy man, thou knowest not the full extent of thy misery, else had
thou never said those words.