EURIPIDES MEDEA

I cannot do it. Farewell, my resolve,

I will bear off my children from this land.

Why should I seek to wring their father's heart,

When that same act will doubly wring my own?

I will not do it. Farewell, my resolve.

What has come o'er me? Shall I let my foes

Triumph, that I may let my friends go free?

I'll brace me to the deed. Base that I was

To let a thought of wickedness cross my soul.

Children, go home. Whoso accounts it wrong

To be attendant at my sacrifice,

Let him stand off; my purpose is unchanged.

Forego my resolutions, O my soul,

Force not the parent's hand to slay the child.

Their presence where we will go will gladden thee.

By the avengers that in Hades reign,

It never shall be said that I have left

My children for my foes to trample on.

It is decreed.

Jason, who has come to punish the murderess of his bride, hears that his children have perished too, and Medea herself appears to him in the chariot of the sun, bestowed by Helios, the sun-god, upon his descendants. She revels in the anguish of her faithless husband.

"I do not leave my children's bodies with thee; I take them with me that I may bury them in Hera's precinct. And for thee, who didst me all that evil, I prophesy an evil doom."

She flies to Aegeus at Athens, and the tragedy closes with the chorus:

Manifold are thy shapings, Providence!

Many a hopeless matter gods arrange.

What we expected never came to pass,