Transform’d the prospect of the briny deep;
Made sleeping billows rave, and raving billows sleep
Made clouds or sunshine, tempests rise or fall,
And stubborn, lawless winds obey my call;
With mutter’d words disarm’d the viper’s jaw,
Up by the roots vast oaks and rocks could draw;
Make forests dance, and trembling mountains come,
Like malefactors, to receive their doom:
Earth groan, and frighted ghosts forsake their tomb;
Thee, Cynthia, my resistless rhymes drew down,
When tinkling cymbals strove my voice to drown,
Nor stronger Titan could their force sustain,
In full career, compell’d to stop his wain;
Nor could Aurora’s virgin blush avail,
With pois’nous herbs I turn’d their roses pale;
The fury of the fiery bulls I broke,
Their stubborn necks submitting to my yoke;
And when the sons of Earth with fury burn’d,
Their hostile rage upon themselves I turn’d;
The brothers made with mutual wounds to bleed,
And by their fatal strife my lover freed;
And, while the dragon slept, to distant Greece,
Through cheated guards, convey’d the golden fleece.
But now to bolder action I proceed,
Of such prevailing juices now have need,
That wither’d years back to their bloom can bring,
And in dead winter raise a second spring.
And you’ll perform ’t—
You will; for lo! the stars, with sparkling fires,
Presage as bright success to my desires:
And, now, another happy omen see!
A chariot drawn by dragons waits for me.”
With these last words she leaps into the wain,
Strokes the snakes’ necks, and shakes the golden rein;
That signal given, they mount up is the skies,
And now beneath her fruitful Tempe lies,
Whose stores she ransacks; then to Crete she flies;
There Ossa, Pelion, Othrys, Pindus, all
To the fair ravisher a booty fall;
The tribute of their verdure she collects,
Nor proud Olympus’ height his plants protects.
Some by the roots she plucks; the tender tops
Of others with her culling sickle crops.
Nor could the plunder of the hills suffice,
Down to the humble vales and meads she flies.
A pidanus, Amphrysus, the next rape
Sustain, nor could Enipeus’ bank escape;
Through Beebes marsh, and through the border ranged,
Whose pasture Glaucus to a triton changed.
Now the ninth day, and ninth successive night,
Had wonder’d at the restless rover’s flight;
Meanwhile her dragons, fed with no repast,
But her exhaling simples’ od’rous blast,
Their tarnish’d scales and wrinkled skins had cast.
At last return’d before her palace gate,
Quitting her chariot, on the ground she sate,
The sky her only canopy of state.
All conversation with her sex she fled,
Shunn’d the caresses of the nuptial bed;
Two altars next of grassy turf she rears,
This Hecate’s name, that youth’s inscription bears;
With forest boughs and vervain these she crown’d,
Then delves a double trench in lower ground,
And sticks a black-fleeced ram, that ready stood,
And drench’d the ditches with devoted blood:
New wine she pours, and milk from the udder warm,
With mystic murmurs to complete the charm,
And subterranean deities alarm.
To the stern king of ghosts she next applied,
And gentle Proserpine, his injured bride,
That for old Aeson with the laws of fate
They would dispense, and lengthen his short date.
Thus with repeated prayers she long assails
The infernal tyrant, and at last prevails;
Then calls to have decrepit Aeson brought,
And stupifies him with a sleeping draught.
On earth his body, like a corpse, extends,
Then charges Jason and his waiting friends
To quit the place, that no unhallow’d eye
Into her art’s forbidden secrets pry.
This done, the enchantress, with her locks unbound,
About her altars trips a frantic round;
Piecemeal the consecrated wood she splits,
And dips the splinters in the bloody pits,
Then hurls them on the piles; the sleeping sire
She lustrates thrice, with sulphur, water, fire.
In a large cauldron now the med’cine boils,
Compounded of her late collected spoils;
Blending into the mesh the various powers
Of wonder-working juices, roots, and flowers;
With gems i’ the eastern ocean’s cell refined,
And such as ebbing tides had left behind;
To them the midnight’s pearly dew she flings,
A screech-owl’s carcass, and ill-boding wings;
Nor could the wizard wolf’s warm entrails ’scape
(That wolf who counterfeits a human shape).
Then, from the bottom of her conj’ring bag,
Snakes’ skins, and liver of a long-lived stag;
Last a crow’s head, to such an age arrived,
That he had now nine centuries survived.
These, and with these a thousand more that grew
In sundry soils, into her pot she threw;
Then with a wither’d olive-bough she rakes
The bubbling broth; the bough fresh verdure takes;
Green leaves at first the perish’d plant surround,
Which the next minute with ripe fruit were crown’d.
The foaming juices now the brink o’erswell;
The barren heath, where’er the liquor fell,
Sprang out with vernal grass, and all the pride
Of blooming May. When this Medea spied,
She cut her patient’s throat; the exhausted blood
Recruiting with her new-enchanted flood;
While at his mouth, and through his opening wound,
A double inlet her infusion found;
His feeble frame resumes a youthful air,
A glossy brown his hoary beard and hair.
The meager paleness from his aspect fled,
And in its room sprang up a florid red;
Through all his limbs a youthful vigour flies,
His emptied arteries swell with fresh supplies;
Gazing spectators scarce believe their eyes.
But Aeson is the most surprised to find
A happy change in body and in mind;
In sense and constitution the same man,
As when his fortieth active year began.
Bacchus, who from the clouds this wonder view’d,
Medea’s method instantly pursued,
And his indulgent nurse’s youth renew’d.
Death of Pelias
The daughters of Pelias, desirous of restoring their father to youth, apply to Medea to enable them to effect their purpose—The enchantress, desirous of revenging the injuries formerly sustained by her husband, directs the credulous maidens to cut their father to pieces, and place his limbs in a cauldron of boiling water—On the arrival of Medea at Corinth, she finds her husband united in marriage to Glauce, the daughter of Creon—This infidelity is severely punished by the injured wife, who contrives to destroy the bride and her father, whose palace she razes to the ground; and cruelly murders her own sons in the presence of Jason, who attempts to pursue her; but the princess makes her escape through the air, on a chariot drawn by winged dragons.
Thus far obliging love employ’d her art,
But now revenge must act a tragic part.
Medea feigns a mortal quarrel bred
Betwixt her and the partner of her bed;
On this pretence to Pelias’ court she flies,
Who languishing with age and sickness lies:
His guiltless daughters,
