and on the
sea sailors from their ships looked towards the Bear and the stars of
Orion; and now the wayfarer and the warder longed for sleep, and the
pall of slumber wrapped round the mother whose children were dead; nor
was there any more the barking of dogs through the city, nor sound of
men's voices; but silence held the blackening gloom. But not indeed upon
Medea came sweet sleep. For in her love for Aeson's son many cares kept
her wakeful, and she dreaded the mighty strength of the bulls, beneath
whose fury he was like to perish by an unseemly fate in the field of
Ares. And fast did her heart throb within her breast, as a sunbeam
quivers upon the walls of a house when flung up from water, which is
just poured forth in a caldron or a pail may be; and hither and thither
on the swift eddy does it dart and dance along; even so the maiden's
heart quivered in her breast. And the tear of pity flowed from her eyes,
and ever within anguish tortured her, a smouldering fire through her
frame, and about her fine nerves and deep down beneath the nape of the
neck where the pain enters keenest, whenever the unwearied Loves direct
against the heart their shafts of agony. And she thought now that she
would give him the charms to cast a spell on the bulls, now that she
would not, and that she herself would perish; and again that she would
not perish and would not give the charms, but just as she was would
endure her fate in silence. Then sitting down she wavered in mind and
said:

(ll. 772-801) "Poor wretch, must I toss hither and thither in woe? On
every side my heart is in despair; nor is there any help for my pain;
but it burneth ever thus. Would that I had been slain by the swift
shafts of Artemis before I had set eyes on him, before Chalciope's sons
reached the Achaean land. Some god or some Fury brought them hither for
our grief, a cause of many tears. Let him perish in the contest if it be
his lot to die in the field. For how could I prepare the charms without
my parents' knowledge? What story call I tell them? What trick, what
cunning device for aid can I find? If I see him alone, apart from his
comrades, shall I greet him? Ill-starred that I am! I cannot hope that I
should rest from my sorrows even though he perished; then will evil come
to me when he is bereft of life. Perish all shame, perish all glow; may
he, saved by my effort, go scatheless wherever his heart desires. But
as for me, on the day when he bides the contes