Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE ARGONAUTS (ARGONATUICA): MEDEA BETRAYED, by APOLLONIUS RHODIUS


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE ARGONAUTS (ARGONATUICA): MEDEA BETRAYED, by                    
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...
Home: PoetryExplorer.net