these things were being accomplished without the
knowledge of his daughters.

(ll. 11-29) But into Medea's heart Hera cast most grievous fear; and
she trembled like a nimble fawn whom the baying of hounds hath terrified
amid the thicket of a deep copse. For at once she truly forboded that
the aid she had given was not hidden from her father, and that quickly
she would fill up the cup of woe. And she dreaded the guilty knowledge
of her handmaids; her eyes were filled with fire and her ears rung with
a terrible cry. Often did she clutch at her throat, and often did she
drag out her hair by the roots and groan in wretched despair. There on
that very day the maiden would have tasted the drugs and perished and so
have made void the purposes of Hera, had not the goddess driven her, all
bewildered, to flee with the sons of Phrixus; and her fluttering soul
within her was comforted; and then she poured from her bosom all the
drugs back again into the casket. Then she kissed her bed, and the
folding-doors on both sides, and stroked the walls, and tearing away
in her hands a long tress of hair, she left it in the chamber for her
mother, a memorial of her maidenhood, and thus lamented with passionate
voice:

(ll. 30-33) "I go, leaving this long tress here in my stead, O mother
mine; take this farewell from me as I go far hence; farewell Chalciope,
and all my home. Would that the sea, stranger, had dashed thee to
pieces, ere thou camest to the Colchian land!"

(ll. 34-56) Thus she spake, and from her eyes shed copious tears. And
as a bondmaid steals away from a wealthy house, whom fate has lately
severed from her native land, nor yet has she made trial of grievous
toil, but still unschooled to misery and shrinking in terror from
slavish tasks, goes about beneath the cruel hands of a mistress; even
so the lovely maiden rushed forth from her home. But to her the bolts of
the doors gave way self-moved, leaping backwards at the swift strains of
her magic song. And with bare feet she sped along the narrow paths, with
her left hand holding her robe over her brow to veil her face and fair
cheeks, and with her right lifting up the hem of her tunic. Quickly
along the dark track, outside the towers of the spacious city, did
she come in fear; nor did any of the warders note her, but she sped on
unseen by them. Thence she was minded to go to the temple; for well she
knew the way, having often aforetime wandered there in quest of corpses
and