Medea

Euripides

Euripides. The Plays of Euripides, Translated into English Prose from the Text of Paley. Vol. I. Coleridge, Edward P., translator. London: George Bell and Sons, 1906.

  1. Ah me! once more I say.
Attendant
  1. Have I unwittingly announced some evil tidings?
  2. Have I erred in thinking my news was good?
Medea
  1. Thy news is as it is; I blame thee not.
Attendant
  1. Then why this downcast eye, these floods of tears?
Medea
  1. Old friend, needs must I weep; for the gods and I with fell intent devised these schemes.
Attendant
  1. Be of good cheer; thou too of a surety shalt by thy sons yet be brought home again.
Medea
  1. Ere that shall I bring others to their home, ah! woe is me!
Attendant
  1. Thou art not the only mother from thy children reft. Bear patiently thy troubles as a mortal must.
Medea
  1. I will obey; go thou within the house
  2. and make the day’s provision for the children. O my babes, my babes, ye have still a city and a home, where far from me and my sad lot you will live your lives, reft of your mother for ever; while I must to another land in banishment,
  3. or ever I have had my joy of you, or lived to see you happy, or ever I have graced your marriage couch, your bride, your bridal bower, or lifted high the wedding torch. Ah me! a victim of my own self-will. So it was all in vain I reared you, O my sons;
  4. in vain did suffer, racked with anguish, enduring the cruel pangs of childbirth. ’Fore Heaven I once had hope, poor me! high hope of ye that you would nurse me in my age and deck my corpse with loving hands,
  5. a boon we mortals covet; but now is my sweet fancy dead and gone; for I must lose you both and in bitterness and sorrow drag through life. And ye shall never with fond eyes see your mother more, for o’er your life there comes a change.
  6. Ah me! ah me! why do ye look at me so, my children? why smile that last sweet smile? Ah me! what am I to do? My heart gives way when I behold my children’s laughing eyes. Ο, I cannot; farewell to all my former schemes;
  7. I will take the children from the land, the babes I bore. Why should I wound their sire by wounding them, and get me a twofold measure of sorrow? No, no, I will not do it. Farewell my scheming!
  8. And yet what am I coming to? Can I consent
  9. to let those foes of mine escape from punishment, and incur their mockery? I must face this deed. Out upon my craven heart! to think that I should even have let the soft[*](Reading πρόεσθαι for which Badham proposes πρόσεσθαι, indulge my mind in gentle thoughts.) words escape my soul. Into the house, children! and whoso feels he must not be present at my sacrifice,
  10. must see to it himself; I will not spoil my
    handiwork. Ah! ah! do not, my heart, O do not do this deed! Let the children go, unhappy one, spare the babes! For if they live, they will cheer thee in our exile there.[*](At Athens.) Nay, by the fiends of hell’s abyss,
  11. never, never will I hand my children over to their foes to mock and flout. Die they must in any case, and since ’tis so, why I, the mother who bore them, will give the fatal blow. In any case their doom is fixed and there is no escape.