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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
THE ARGONAUTS (ARGONATUICA): MEDEA BETRAYED, by APOLLONIUS RHODIUS First Line: Jason, what scheme is framed, what's laid in store Last Line: Your winking scorn, all covenants you plot!' Alternate Author Name(s): Apollonius Of Rhodes Subject(s): Betrayal | |||
'JASON, what scheme is framed, what's laid in store For me, between you? Have old glories won Steeped your remembrance, banishing all regard For speech you made when the strait clutch of need Gripped you, and when by the Suppliants' God you swore? Where are your pledges now? Where is there gone That honey of promises, by which deceived Unruly, lost to all shame and modesty, I have put away from me land and famous home, My very parents, all of my all at once, To drift with the melancholy halcyons For your work's sake, alone over the water; That safe, my friend, you still should overcome, First with the bulls contesting and men earthborn, And last, when all was known, winning the fleece All through my blindness! On the name of woman I have poured foul scorn. You are all my kin: I must ship with you as daughter, As the wife of you, as sister, back to Greece. Then stand and guard me, show me your loving kindness; Do not desert me when you visit the kings For judgement, leaving me alone, but still Deliver me. So either do you fulfil What's just for god and man, the plight of our plighting, Or shear my neck with a sword, giving requiting Justly agreeable with my passionate follies. O horror, if the king you both entrust With unkind pact to judge me, shall decide I am in my brother's keeping! With what grace Am I to come before my father's face? In what brave triumph? What shall I not be given Of painful vengeance from the ponderous stroke Of fate's requital, doing the thing I did? And you meanwhile would happily make for home? Then may the queen of queens, the lady of Heaven In whom you glory, never grant this thing! Some time may all the pains that sap you tell you To think of me! Into the nether dark May the fleece vanish, empty as the wind! May my Avenging Spirits at once expel you Out of your land, as pitilessly unkind As I have found you stubborn to my hurt. God's doom will never let my curses fall Down to the ground before they find their mark. Unfeeling! a great oath you broke; but not For long shall you and your friends sit safe, for all Your winking scorn, all covenants you plot!' | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE CELLAR by LAURE-ANNE BOSSELAAR BETRAYALS/HADES, EURYDICE, ORPHEUS by GREGORY ORR ELEGY: THE LAMENT OF EDWARD BLASTOCK; FOR RICHARD ROWLEY by EDITH SITWELL SPRECHSTIMME (COUNTESS OF DIA) by ANNE WALDMAN A BALLAD OF HELL by JOHN DAVIDSON THE BABES IN THE WOOD; OR, THE NORFOLK TRAGEDY by RICHARD HARRIS BARHAM THE ARGONAUTS (ARGONATUICA): AMOR OMNIPOTENS by APOLLONIUS RHODIUS THE ARGONAUTS (ARGONATUICA): EROS AND HIS MOTHER by APOLLONIUS RHODIUS |
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