JASON. Thou living hate! Thou wife in every age

Abhorrèd, blood-red mother, who didst kill

My sons, and make me as the dead: and still

Canst take the sunshine to thine eyes, and smell

The green earth, reeking from thy deed of hell;

I curse thee! Now, Oh, now mine eyes can see,

That then were blinded, when from savagery

Of eastern chambers, from a cruel land,

To Greece and home I gathered in mine hand

Thee, thou incarnate curse: one that betrayed

Her home, her father, her… Oh, God hath laid

Thy sins on me!—I knew, I knew, there lay

A brother murdered on thy hearth that day

When thy first footstep fell on Argo’s hull…

Argo, my own, my swift and beautiful!

That was her first beginning. Then a wife

I made her in my house. She bore to life

Children: and now for love, for chambering

And men’s arms, she hath murdered them! A thing

Not one of all the maids of Greece, not one,

Had dreamed of; whom I spurned, and for mine own

Chose thee, a bride of hate to me and death,

Tigress, not woman, beast of wilder breath

Than Skylla shrieking o’er the Tuscan sea.

Enough! No scorn of mine can reach to thee,

Such iron is o’er thine eyes. Out from my road,

Thou crime-begetter, blind with children’s blood!

And let me weep alone the bitter tide

That sweepeth Jason’s days, no gentle bride

To speak with more, no child to look upon

Whom once I reared… all, all for ever gone!

MEDEA. An easy answer had I to this swell

Of speech, but Zeus our father knoweth well,

All I for thee have wrought, and thou for me.

So let it rest. This thing was not to be,

That thou shouldst live a merry life, my bed

Forgotten and my heart uncomforted,

Thou nor thy princess: nor the king that planned

Thy marriage drive Medea from his land,

And suffer not. Call me what thing thou please,

Tigress or Skylla from the Tuscan seas:

My claws have gripped thine heart, and all things shine.

JASON. Thou too hast grief. Thy pain is fierce as mine.

MEDEA. I love the pain, so thou shalt laugh no more.

JASON. Oh, what a womb of sin my children bore!

MEDEA. Sons, did ye perish for your father’s shame?

JASON. How? It was not my hand that murdered them.

MEDEA. ’Twas thy false wooings, ’twas thy trampling pride.

JASON. Thou hast said it! For thy lust of love they died.

MEDEA. And love to women a slight thing should be?

JASON. To women pure!—All thy vile life to thee!

MEDEA. Think of thy torment. They are dead, they are dead!

JASON. No: quick, great God; quick curses round thy head!

MEDEA. The Gods know who began this work of woe.

JASON. Thy heart and all its loathliness they know.