ilence, dame, I say!
What is this madness? Cease these frantic cries!
'Tis our part to await whate'er may come,
Not bid it hasten.--Thou didst say but now
There is no past, no future; when a deed
Is done, 'tis done for all time; we can know
Only this one brief present instant, Now.
Say, if this Now may cradle a dim future,
Why may it not entomb the misty past?
My past! Would God that I could change it--now!
And bitter tears I weep for it, bitterer far
Than thou dost dream of.--Yet, that is no cause
To seek destruction. Rather is there need
Clearly to know myself, face honestly
The thing I am. Here to these foreign shores
And stranger folk a god hath driven us;
And what seemed right in Colchis, here is named
Evil and wickedness; our wonted ways
Win hatred here in Corinth, and distrust.
So, it is meet we change our ways and speech;
If we may be no longer what we would,
Let us at least, then, be e'en what we can.--
The ties that bound me to my fatherland
Here in earth's bosom I have buried deep;
The magic rites my mother taught me, all
Back to the Night that bare them I have given.
Now, but a woman, weak, alone, defenseless,
I throw me in my husband's open arms!
He shuddered at the Colchian witch! But now
I am his true, dear wife; and surely he
Will take me to his loving, shelt'ring arms.--
Lo, the day breaks, fair sign of our new life
Together! The dark past has ceased to be,
The happy future beckons!--Thou, O Earth,
The kind and gentle mother of us all,
Guard well my trust, that in thy bosom lies.

[_As she and_ GORA _approach the tent, it opens, and _JASON _appears,
talking with a Corinthian rustic, and followed by a slave._]

JASON. Thou saw'st the king himself?

RUSTIC. I did, my lord.

JASON. How went thy tale?

RUSTIC. I Said, "One waits without,
A guest-friend of thy house, well-known to thee,
Yet so hedged round is he with traitorous foes,
He dares not enter, ere thou promise him
Pe