Of heaven reversing? Grant that I be borne aloft
In my ancestral car! Give me the reins, O sire,
Thy fiery team grant me to guide with lines of flame.
Then Corinth, though with double shore delaying fate, 35
Herself consumed with fire, shall light two seas with flame.
But no, this course alone remains, that I myself
Should bear the wedding torch, with acquiescent prayers,
And slay the victims on the altars consecrate.
Thyself inspect the entrails, and seek there the way 40
By prayer, if still, O soul, thou livest, if there still
Remaineth aught of old-time strength in thee! Away
With woman's fears! Put on thy heart a breast-plate hard
And chill as Caucasus! Then all the wizard arts
That Phasis knew, or Pontus, shall be seen again
In Corinth. Now with mad, unheard of, dreadful deeds, 45
Whereat high heaven and earth below shall pale and quake,
My pregnant soul is teeming; and my heart is full
Of pictured wounds and death and slaughter.—Ah, too long
On trifling ills I dwell. These were my virgin deeds.
Now that a mother's pains I've felt, my larger heart 50
Must larger crimes conceive. Then passion, gird thyself,
Put on thy strength, and for the issue now prepare!
Let my rejection pay as dread a fee as when,
Of old, through impious deeds of blood, I came to him.
Come, break through slow delay, and let the home once won
By crime, by equal deeds of crime be done away! 55
Chorus [chanting the epithalamium for the nuptials of Jason and Creüsa]:
Now on our royal nuptials graciously smiling,
Here may the lords of heaven and the deeps of the ocean
Come while the people feast in pious rejoicing!
First to the gods who sway the scepter of heaven,
Pealing forth their will in the voice of thunder,
Let the white bull his proud head bow in tribute. 60
Then to the fair Lucina, her gift we offer,
White as the driven snow, this beautiful heifer,
Still with her neck untouched by the yoke of bondage.
