章节正文
(MEDEA enters the house.)
CHORUS (chanting)
O earth, O sun whose beam illumines all, look, look upon this lost
woman, ere she stretch forth her murderous hand upon her sons for
blood; for lo! these are scions of thy own golden seed, and the
blood of gods is in danger of being shed by man. O light, from Zeus
proceeding, stay her, hold her hand, forth from the house chase this
fell bloody fiend by demons led. Vainly wasted were the throes thy
children cost thee; vainly hast thou borne, it seems, sweet babes, O
thou who hast left behind thee that passage through the blue
Symplegades, that strangers justly hate. Ah! hapless one, why doth
fierce anger thy soul assail? Why in its place is fell murder
growing up? For grievous unto mortal men are pollutions that come of
kindred blood poured on the earth, woes to suit each crime hurled from
heaven on the murderer's house.
FIRST SON (within)
Ah, me; what can I do? Whither fly to escape my mother's blows?
SECOND SON (within)
I know not, sweet brother mine; we are lost.
CHORUS (chanting)
Didst hear, didst hear the children's cry? O lady, born to sorrow,
victim of an evil fate! Shall I enter the house? For the children's
sake I am resolved to ward off the murder.
FIRST SON (within)
Yea, by heaven I adjure you; help, your aid is needed.
SECOND SON (within)
Even now the toils of the sword are closing round us.
CHORUS (chanting)
O hapless mother, surely thou hast a heart of stone or steel to
slay the offspring of thy womb by such a murderous doom. Of all the
wives of yore I know but one who laid her hand upon her children dear,
even Ino, whom the gods did madden in the day that the wife of Zeus
drove her wandering from her home. But she, poor sufferer, flung
herself into the sea because of the foul murder of her children,
leaping o'er the wave-beat cliff, and in her death was she united to
her children twain. Can there be any deed of horror left to follow
this? Woe for the wooing of women fraught with disaster! What
sorrows hast thou caused for men ere now!
(JASON and his attendants enter.)
JASON
Ladies, stationed near this house, pray tell me is the author of
these hideous deeds, Medea, still within, or hath she fled from hence?
For she must hide beneath the earth or soar on wings towards
heaven's vault, if she would avoid the vengeance of the royal house.
Is she so sure she will escape herself unpunished from this house,
when she hath slain the rulers of the land? But enough of this! I am
forgetting her children. As for her, those whom she hath wronged
will do the like by her; but I am come to save the children's life,
lest the victim's kin visit their wrath on me, in vengeance for the
murder foul, wrought by my children's mother.
LEADER OF THE CHORUS
Unhappy man, thou knowest not the full extent of thy misery,
else had thou never said those words.
JASON
How now? Can she want to kill me too?
LEADER
Thy sons are dead; slain by their own mother's hand.
JASON
O God! what sayest thou? Woman, thou hast sealed my doom.
LEADER
Thy children are no more; be sure of this.
JASON
Where slew she them; within the palace or outside?
LEADER
Throw wide the doors and see thy children's murdered corpses.
JASON
Haste, ye slaves, loose the bolts, undo the fastenings, that I may
see the sight of twofold woe, my murdered sons and her, whose blood in
vengeance I will shed.
(MEDEA appears above the house, on a chariot drawn by
dragons; the children's corpses are beside her.)
MEDEA
Why shake those doors and attempt to loose their bolts, in quest
of the dead and me their murderess? From such toil desist. If thou
wouldst aught with me, say on, if so thou wilt; but never shalt thou
lay hand on me, so swift the steeds the sun, my father's sire, to me
doth give to save me from the hand of my foes.
JASON
Accursed woman! by gods, by me and all mankind abhorred as never
woman was, who hadst the heart to stab thy babes, thou their mother,
leaving me undone and childless; this hast thou done and still dost
gaze upon the sun and earth after this deed most impious. Curses on
thee! now perceive what then I missed in the day I brought thee,
fraught with doom, from thy home in a barbarian land to dwell in
Hellas, traitress to thy sire and to the land that nurtured thee. On
me the gods have hurled the curse that dogged thy steps, for thou
didst slay thy brother at his hearth ere thou cam'st aboard our fair
ship, Argo. Such was the outset of thy life of crime; then didst
thou wed with me, and having borne me sons to glut thy passion's lust,
thou now hast slain them. Not one amongst the wives of Hellas e'er had
dared this deed; yet before them all I chose thee for my wife, wedding
a foe to be my doom, no woman, but a lioness fiercer than Tyrrhene
Scylla in nature. But with reproaches heaped thousandfold I cannot
wound thee, so brazen is thy nature. Perish, vile sorceress, murderess
of thy babes! Whilst I must mourn my luckless fate, for I shall
ne'er enjoy my new-found bride, nor shall I have the children, whom
I bred and reared, alive to say the last farewell to me; nay, I have
lost them.
MEDEA
To this thy speech I could have made a long reply, but Father Zeus
knows well all I have done for thee, and the treatment thou hast given
me. Yet thou wert not ordained to scorn my love and lead a life of joy
in mockery of me, nor was thy royal bride nor Creon, who gave thee a
second wife, to thrust me from this land and rue it not. Wherefore, if
thou wilt, call me e'en a lioness, and Scylla, whose home is in the
Tyrrhene land; for I in turn have wrung thy heart, as well I might.
JASON
Thou, too, art grieved thyself, and sharest in my sorrow.
MEDEA
Be well assured I am; but it relieves my pain to know thou canst
not mock at me.
JASON
O my children, how vile a mother ye have found!
MEDEA
My sons, your father's feeble lust has been your ruin!
JASON
'Twas not my hand, at any rate, that slew them.
MEDEA
No, but thy foul treatment of me, and thy new marriage.
JASON
Didst think that marriage cause enough to murder them?
MEDEA
Dost think a woman counts this a trifling injury?
JASON
So she be self-restrained; but in thy eyes all is evil.
MEDEA
Thy sons are dead and gone. That will stab thy heart.
JASON
They live, methinks, to bring a curse upon thy head.
MEDEA
The gods know, whoso of them began this troublous coil.
JASON
Indeed, they know that hateful heart of thine.
MEDEA
Thou art as hateful. I am aweary of thy bitter tongue.
JASON
And I likewise of thine. But parting is easy.
MEDEA
Say how; what am I to do? for I am fain as thou to go.
JASON
Give up to me those dead, to bury and lament.
MEDEA
No, never! I will bury them myself, bearing them to Hera's
sacred field, who watches o'er the Cape, that none of their foes may
insult them by pulling down their tombs; and in this land of
Sisyphus I will ordainhereafter a solemn feast and mystic rites to
atone for this impious murder. Myself will now to the land of
Erechtheus, to dwell with Aegeus, Pandion's son. But thou, as well
thou mayst, shalt die a caitiff's death, thy head crushed 'neath a
shattered relic of Argo, when thou hast seen the bitter ending of my
marriage.
JASON
The curse of our sons' avenging spirit and of justice, that
calls for blood, be on thee!
MEDEA
What god or power divine hears thee, breaker of oaths and every
law of hospitality?
JASON
Fie upon thee! cursed witch! child-murderess!
MEDEA
To thy house! go, bury thy wife.
JASON
I go, bereft of both my sons.
MEDEA
Thy grief is yet to come; wait till old age is with thee too.
JASON
O my dear, dear children!
MEDEA
Dear to their mother, not to thee.
JASON
And yet thou didst slay them?
MEDEA
Yea, to vex thy heart.
JASON
One last fond kiss, ah me! I fain would on their lips imprint.
MEDEA
Embraces now, and fond farewells for them; but then a cold
repulse!
JASON
By heaven I do adjure thee, let me touch their tender skin.
MEDEA
No, no! in vain this word has sped its flight.
JASON
O Zeus, dost hear how I am driven hence; dost mark the treatment I
receive from this she-lion, fell murderess of her young? Yet so far as
I may and can, I raise for them a dirge, and do adjure the gods to
witness how thou hast slain my sons, and wilt not suffer me to embrace
or bury their dead bodies. Would I had never begotten them to see thee
slay them after all!
(The chariot carries MEDEA away.)
CHORUS (chanting)
Many a fate doth Zeus dispense, high on his Olympian throne; oft
do the gods bring things to pass beyond man's expectation; that, which
we thought would be, is not fulfilled, while for the unlooked-for
god finds out a way; and such hath been the issue of this matter.
-THE END-
.
CHORUS (chanting)
O earth, O sun whose beam illumines all, look, look upon this lost
woman, ere she stretch forth her murderous hand upon her sons for
blood; for lo! these are scions of thy own golden seed, and the
blood of gods is in danger of being shed by man. O light, from Zeus
proceeding, stay her, hold her hand, forth from the house chase this
fell bloody fiend by demons led. Vainly wasted were the throes thy
children cost thee; vainly hast thou borne, it seems, sweet babes, O
thou who hast left behind thee that passage through the blue
Symplegades, that strangers justly hate. Ah! hapless one, why doth
fierce anger thy soul assail? Why in its place is fell murder
growing up? For grievous unto mortal men are pollutions that come of
kindred blood poured on the earth, woes to suit each crime hurled from
heaven on the murderer's house.
FIRST SON (within)
Ah, me; what can I do? Whither fly to escape my mother's blows?
SECOND SON (within)
I know not, sweet brother mine; we are lost.
CHORUS (chanting)
Didst hear, didst hear the children's cry? O lady, born to sorrow,
victim of an evil fate! Shall I enter the house? For the children's
sake I am resolved to ward off the murder.
FIRST SON (within)
Yea, by heaven I adjure you; help, your aid is needed.
SECOND SON (within)
Even now the toils of the sword are closing round us.
CHORUS (chanting)
O hapless mother, surely thou hast a heart of stone or steel to
slay the offspring of thy womb by such a murderous doom. Of all the
wives of yore I know but one who laid her hand upon her children dear,
even Ino, whom the gods did madden in the day that the wife of Zeus
drove her wandering from her home. But she, poor sufferer, flung
herself into the sea because of the foul murder of her children,
leaping o'er the wave-beat cliff, and in her death was she united to
her children twain. Can there be any deed of horror left to follow
this? Woe for the wooing of women fraught with disaster! What
sorrows hast thou caused for men ere now!
(JASON and his attendants enter.)
JASON
Ladies, stationed near this house, pray tell me is the author of
these hideous deeds, Medea, still within, or hath she fled from hence?
For she must hide beneath the earth or soar on wings towards
heaven's vault, if she would avoid the vengeance of the royal house.
Is she so sure she will escape herself unpunished from this house,
when she hath slain the rulers of the land? But enough of this! I am
forgetting her children. As for her, those whom she hath wronged
will do the like by her; but I am come to save the children's life,
lest the victim's kin visit their wrath on me, in vengeance for the
murder foul, wrought by my children's mother.
LEADER OF THE CHORUS
Unhappy man, thou knowest not the full extent of thy misery,
else had thou never said those words.
JASON
How now? Can she want to kill me too?
LEADER
Thy sons are dead; slain by their own mother's hand.
JASON
O God! what sayest thou? Woman, thou hast sealed my doom.
LEADER
Thy children are no more; be sure of this.
JASON
Where slew she them; within the palace or outside?
LEADER
Throw wide the doors and see thy children's murdered corpses.
JASON
Haste, ye slaves, loose the bolts, undo the fastenings, that I may
see the sight of twofold woe, my murdered sons and her, whose blood in
vengeance I will shed.
(MEDEA appears above the house, on a chariot drawn by
dragons; the children's corpses are beside her.)
MEDEA
Why shake those doors and attempt to loose their bolts, in quest
of the dead and me their murderess? From such toil desist. If thou
wouldst aught with me, say on, if so thou wilt; but never shalt thou
lay hand on me, so swift the steeds the sun, my father's sire, to me
doth give to save me from the hand of my foes.
JASON
Accursed woman! by gods, by me and all mankind abhorred as never
woman was, who hadst the heart to stab thy babes, thou their mother,
leaving me undone and childless; this hast thou done and still dost
gaze upon the sun and earth after this deed most impious. Curses on
thee! now perceive what then I missed in the day I brought thee,
fraught with doom, from thy home in a barbarian land to dwell in
Hellas, traitress to thy sire and to the land that nurtured thee. On
me the gods have hurled the curse that dogged thy steps, for thou
didst slay thy brother at his hearth ere thou cam'st aboard our fair
ship, Argo. Such was the outset of thy life of crime; then didst
thou wed with me, and having borne me sons to glut thy passion's lust,
thou now hast slain them. Not one amongst the wives of Hellas e'er had
dared this deed; yet before them all I chose thee for my wife, wedding
a foe to be my doom, no woman, but a lioness fiercer than Tyrrhene
Scylla in nature. But with reproaches heaped thousandfold I cannot
wound thee, so brazen is thy nature. Perish, vile sorceress, murderess
of thy babes! Whilst I must mourn my luckless fate, for I shall
ne'er enjoy my new-found bride, nor shall I have the children, whom
I bred and reared, alive to say the last farewell to me; nay, I have
lost them.
MEDEA
To this thy speech I could have made a long reply, but Father Zeus
knows well all I have done for thee, and the treatment thou hast given
me. Yet thou wert not ordained to scorn my love and lead a life of joy
in mockery of me, nor was thy royal bride nor Creon, who gave thee a
second wife, to thrust me from this land and rue it not. Wherefore, if
thou wilt, call me e'en a lioness, and Scylla, whose home is in the
Tyrrhene land; for I in turn have wrung thy heart, as well I might.
JASON
Thou, too, art grieved thyself, and sharest in my sorrow.
MEDEA
Be well assured I am; but it relieves my pain to know thou canst
not mock at me.
JASON
O my children, how vile a mother ye have found!
MEDEA
My sons, your father's feeble lust has been your ruin!
JASON
'Twas not my hand, at any rate, that slew them.
MEDEA
No, but thy foul treatment of me, and thy new marriage.
JASON
Didst think that marriage cause enough to murder them?
MEDEA
Dost think a woman counts this a trifling injury?
JASON
So she be self-restrained; but in thy eyes all is evil.
MEDEA
Thy sons are dead and gone. That will stab thy heart.
JASON
They live, methinks, to bring a curse upon thy head.
MEDEA
The gods know, whoso of them began this troublous coil.
JASON
Indeed, they know that hateful heart of thine.
MEDEA
Thou art as hateful. I am aweary of thy bitter tongue.
JASON
And I likewise of thine. But parting is easy.
MEDEA
Say how; what am I to do? for I am fain as thou to go.
JASON
Give up to me those dead, to bury and lament.
MEDEA
No, never! I will bury them myself, bearing them to Hera's
sacred field, who watches o'er the Cape, that none of their foes may
insult them by pulling down their tombs; and in this land of
Sisyphus I will ordainhereafter a solemn feast and mystic rites to
atone for this impious murder. Myself will now to the land of
Erechtheus, to dwell with Aegeus, Pandion's son. But thou, as well
thou mayst, shalt die a caitiff's death, thy head crushed 'neath a
shattered relic of Argo, when thou hast seen the bitter ending of my
marriage.
JASON
The curse of our sons' avenging spirit and of justice, that
calls for blood, be on thee!
MEDEA
What god or power divine hears thee, breaker of oaths and every
law of hospitality?
JASON
Fie upon thee! cursed witch! child-murderess!
MEDEA
To thy house! go, bury thy wife.
JASON
I go, bereft of both my sons.
MEDEA
Thy grief is yet to come; wait till old age is with thee too.
JASON
O my dear, dear children!
MEDEA
Dear to their mother, not to thee.
JASON
And yet thou didst slay them?
MEDEA
Yea, to vex thy heart.
JASON
One last fond kiss, ah me! I fain would on their lips imprint.
MEDEA
Embraces now, and fond farewells for them; but then a cold
repulse!
JASON
By heaven I do adjure thee, let me touch their tender skin.
MEDEA
No, no! in vain this word has sped its flight.
JASON
O Zeus, dost hear how I am driven hence; dost mark the treatment I
receive from this she-lion, fell murderess of her young? Yet so far as
I may and can, I raise for them a dirge, and do adjure the gods to
witness how thou hast slain my sons, and wilt not suffer me to embrace
or bury their dead bodies. Would I had never begotten them to see thee
slay them after all!
(The chariot carries MEDEA away.)
CHORUS (chanting)
Many a fate doth Zeus dispense, high on his Olympian throne; oft
do the gods bring things to pass beyond man's expectation; that, which
we thought would be, is not fulfilled, while for the unlooked-for
god finds out a way; and such hath been the issue of this matter.
-THE END-
.
- bloody [´blʌdi]
a.(流)血的；血腥的 (初中英语单词) - horror [´hɔrə] n.恐怖；战栗 (初中英语单词)
- wrought [rɔ:t] work 的过去式(分词) (初中英语单词)
- extent [ik´stent] n.长度；程度；范围 (初中英语单词)
- perceive [pə´si:v] vt.察觉；看出；领悟 (初中英语单词)
- aboard [ə´bɔ:d] ad.&prep.在...上 (初中英语单词)
- perish [´periʃ] v.灭亡；消灭；(使)死去 (初中英语单词)
- farewell [feə´wel] int.再见 n.&a.告别 (初中英语单词)
- treatment [´tri:tmənt] n.待遇；对待；治疗 (初中英语单词)
- thrust [θrʌst] v.&n.猛推；冲；刺；挤进 (初中英语单词)
- feeble [´fi:bəl] a.虚弱的，无力的 (初中英语单词)
- trifling [´traifliŋ] a.微小的；轻浮的 (初中英语单词)
- likewise [´laikwaiz] ad.同样地；也，又 (初中英语单词)
- solemn [´sɔləm] a.严肃的；隆重的 (初中英语单词)
- divine [di´vain] a.神圣的 v.预言 (初中英语单词)
- driven [´driv(ə)n] drive 的过去分词 (初中英语单词)
- vainly [´veinli] ad.虚荣地；自负地 (高中英语单词)
- assail [ə´seil] vt.猛击；困扰 (高中英语单词)
- mortal [´mɔ:tl] a.致命的 n.凡人 (高中英语单词)
- hideous [´hidiəs] a.丑陋的，可怕的 (高中英语单词)
- vengeance [´vendʒəns] n.报复，复仇 (高中英语单词)
- chariot [´tʃæriət] n.古时双轮战车 (高中英语单词)
- hearth [hɑ:θ] n.炉边；家庭(生活) (高中英语单词)
- amongst [ə´mʌŋst] prep.其中之一 =among (高中英语单词)
- whilst [wailst] conj.当...时候；虽然 (高中英语单词)
- methinks [mi´θiŋks] vi.据我看来 (高中英语单词)
- bearing [´beəriŋ] n.举止；忍耐；关系 (高中英语单词)
- ordain [ɔ:´dein] v.规定；颁布命令 (高中英语单词)
- hereafter [hiər´ɑ:ftə] ad.&n.将来；来世 (高中英语单词)
- ending [´endiŋ] n.结尾，结局 (高中英语单词)
- throne [θrəun] n.宝座；王位 (高中英语单词)
- expectation [,ekspek´teiʃən] n.期待(望)；预期 (高中英语单词)
- murderous [´mə:dərəs] a.行凶的；势不可挡的 (英语四级单词)
- justly [´dʒʌstli] ad.公正地，正当地 (英语四级单词)
- grievous [´gri:vəs] a.痛苦的；严重的 (英语四级单词)
- resolved [ri´zɔlvd] a.决心的；坚定的 (英语四级单词)
- sufferer [´sʌfərə] n.受苦的人；患者 (英语四级单词)
- barbarian [bɑ:´beəriən] a.&n.野蛮(人)的 (英语四级单词)
- brazen [´breizən] a.黄铜制的；无耻的 (英语四级单词)
- wherefore [´weəfɔ:] ad.为什么；因此 (英语四级单词)
- hateful [´heitfəl] a.可恨的，可憎的 (英语四级单词)
- parting [´pɑ:tiŋ] a.&n.分离(的) (英语四级单词)
- breaker [´breikə] n.浪花；破坏者 (英语四级单词)
- dispense [di´spens] v.分配；施与；执行 (英语四级单词)
- hapless [´hæpləs] a.不幸的；倒楣的 (英语六级单词)
- madden [´mædən] vt.使发狂；使大怒 (英语六级单词)
- fraught [frɔ:t] a.充满...的 (英语六级单词)
- undone [,ʌn´dʌn] a.未完成的，没有做的 (英语六级单词)
- impious [´impiəs] a.不敬的；不孝的 (英语六级单词)
- mockery [´mɔkəri] n.嘲笑；笑柄 (英语六级单词)
- assured [ə´ʃuəd] a.确实的 n.被保险人 (英语六级单词)
- mystic [´mistik] a.神秘的；难以理解的 (英语六级单词)
- bereft [bi´reft] bereave的过去分词 (英语六级单词)
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