The Colchians stare; the Grecians shout, and raise
Their champion’s courage with inspiring praise.
Imbolden’d now, on fresh attempts he goes,
With serpent’s teeth the fertile furrows sows;
The glebe fermenting, with enchanted juice,
Makes the snake’s teeth a human crop produce:
For, as an infant, pris’ner to the womb,
Contented sleeps, till to perfection come,
Then does the cell’s obscure confinement scorn,
He tosses, throbs, and presses to be born,
So, from the lab’ring earth, no single birth,
But a whole troop of lusty youths, rush forth;
And, what’s more strange, with martial fury warm’d,
And for encounter all completely arm’d;
In rank and file, as they were sow’d, they stand,
Impatient for the signal of command.
No foe but the Aemonian youth appears;
At him they level their steel-pointed spears;
His frighted friends, who triumph’d just before,
With peals of sighs, his desperate case deplore;
And where such hardy warriors are afraid,
What must the tender and enamour’d maid?
Her spirits sink, the blood her cheek forsook;
She fears, who for his safety undertook;
She knew the virtue of the spells she gave,
She knew the force, and knew her lover brave:
But what’s a single champion to a host?
Yet, scorning thus to see him tamely lost,
Her strong reserve of secret arts she brings,
And last, her never-failing song she sings.
Wonders ensue; among his gazing foes
The massy fragment of a rock he throws;
This charm in civil war engaged them all;
By mutual wounds those earthborn brothers fall.
The Greeks, transported with the strange success,
Leap from their seats the conq’ror to caress;
Commend, and kiss, and clasp him in their arms
So would the kind contriver of the charms;
But her, who felt the tenderest concern,
Honour condemns in secret flames to burn;
Committed to a double guard of fame,
Awed by a virgin’s and a princess’ name.
But thoughts are free, and fancy unconfined,
She kisses, courts, and hugs him in her mind;
To fav’ring powers her silent thanks she gives,
By whose indulgence her loved hero lives.
One labour more remains, and, though the last,
In danger far surmounting all the past;
That enterprise, by Fates, in store was kept,
To make the dragon sleep, that never slept,
Whose crest shoots dreadful lustre; from his jaws
A triple tire of forked stings he draws,
With fangs, and wings of a prodigious size:
Such was the guardian of the golden prize.
Yet him, besprinkled with Lethaean dew,
The fair enchantress into slumber threw;
And then, to fix him, thrice she did repeat
The rhyme, that makes the raging winds retreat;
In stormy seas can halcyon seasons make,
Turn rapid streams into a standing lake;
While the soft guest his drowsy eyelids seals,
The unguarded golden fleece the stranger steals;
Proud to possess the purchase of the toil,
Proud of his royal bride, the richer spoil;
To sea both prize and patroness he bore,
And lands triumphant on his native shore.
Old Aeson Restored to Youth
Medea, at the request of her husband, restores his aged father, Aeson, to the vigour and sprightliness of youth.
Aemonian matrons, who their absence mourn’d,
Rejoice to see their prosp’rous sons reiurn’d:
Rich curling fumes of incense feast the skies,
A hecatomb of voted victims dies,
With gilded horns, and garlands on their head,
And all the pomp of death, to the altar led.
Congratulating bowls go briskly round,
Triumphant shouts in louder music drown’d.
Amid these revels, why that cloud of care
On Jason’s brow? (to whom the largest share
Of mirth was due)—his father was not there.
Aeson was absent, once the young and brave,
Now crush’d with years, and bending to the grave.
At last withdrawn, and by the crowd unseen,
Pressing her hand (with starting sighs between),
He supplicates his kind and skilful queen.
“O patroness, preserver of my life!
(Dear when my mistress, and much dearer wife)
Your favours to so vast a sum amount,
’Tis past the power of numbers to recount;
Or, could they be to computation brought,
The history would a romance be thought:
And yet, unless you add one favour more,
Greater than all that you conferr’d before,
But not too hard for love and magic skill,
Your past are thrown away, and Jason’s wretched still.
The morning of my life is just begun,
But my declining father’s race is run;
From my large stock retrench the long arrears,
And add them to expiring Aeson’s years.”
Thus spake the generous youth, and wept the rest
Moved with the piety of his request,
To his aged sire such filial duty shown,
So different from her treatment of her own,
But still endeav’ring her remorse to hide,
She check’d her rising sighs, and thus replied:
“How could the thought of such inhuman wrong
Escape,” said she, “from pious Jason’s tongue?
Does the whole world another Jason bear,
Whose life Medea can to yours prefer?
Or could I with so dire a change dispense,
Hecate will never join in that offence:
Unjust is the request you make, and I,
In kindness, your petition shall deny;
Yet she, that grants not what you do implore,
Shall yet essay to give her Jason more,
Find means to increase the stock of Aeson’s years,
Without retrenchment of your life’s arrears,
Provided that the triple goddess join
A strong confederate in my bold design.”
Thus was her enterprise resolved; but still
Three tedious nights are wanting to fulfil
The circling crescents of the increasing moon;
Then, in the height of her nocturnal noon,
Medea steals from court; her ankles bare,
Her garments closely girt, but loose her hair;
Thus sallied, like a solitary sprite,
She traverses the terrors of the night.
Men, beasts, and birds, in soft repose lay charm’d,
No boist’rous wind the mountain-woods alarm’d;
Nor did those walks of love, the myrtle-trees,
Of am’rous Zephyr hear the whisp’ring breeze;
All elements chain’d in unactive rest,
No sense but what the twinkling stars express’d;
To them (that only waked) she rears her arms,
And thus commences her mysterious charms.
She turn’d her thrice about, as oft she threw
On her pale tresses the nocturnal dew,
Then yelling thrice a most enormous sound,
Her bare knee bended on the flinty ground,
“O Night,” said she, “thou confidant and guide
Of secrets, such as darkness ought to hide;
Ye stars and moon, that, when the sun retires,
Support his empire with succeeding fires;
And thou, great Hecate, friend to ny design;
Songs, mutt’ring spells, your magic forces join;
And thou, O Earth, the magazine that yields
The midnight sorc’rer drugs; skies, mountains, fields;
Ye watery powers of fountain, stream, and lake;
Ye sylvan gods, and gods of night, awake,
And generously your parts in my adventure take.
“Oft, by your aid, swift currents I have led,
Through wand’ring banks, back
