now had nine nights elaps'd,
Borne on her dragon wings, and in her car
Wandering the fields among, ere back she turn'd:
Unfed her dragons, save by odorous smells;
Yet had they shed their scales, with youth renew'd.
Arriv'd, without the palace gate she stays,
And there sole shelter'd by the sky, all touch
Of man denying; altars two she rears
Of turf; sacred to Hecate stood the right,
To Youth the left: when these with vervain bound.
And forest boughs, here sacrifice she makes.
Hard by, two trenches scoops from out the ground;
Smites with her weapon in the sable throat,
A sheep presented; in the open ditch
Empties the blood; then bowls of wine she pours,
And bowls of smoking milk; with mystic words
Invokes the powers terrestrial; begs the king
Of shades, and begs his ravish'd spouse to aid,
Nor of his soul the aged king defraud.
These when with lengthen'd prayers, and murmurings long,
Appeas'd; she bids them tow'rd the altars bring
The feeble AEson; his exhausted limbs
Bound in deep slumber, by her magic power,
Corse-like, she lays extended on the grass.
Then Jason bids, and his attendant crew,
Far thence depart, nor with their view prophane
Her acts mysterious. As she bids they go.
Medea then the flaming altars round,
In Bacchanalian guise her flowing locks,
Circles; and in the ditch's blackening gore
Her splinter'd torches dips; with blood imbu'd,
Burns them upon her altars; thrice with fire,
With sulphur thrice, and thrice with flowing streams,
The sire she lustrates. Heated now in brass,
Her powerful medicines bubble, high and white
The swelling froth appears. There boils she all
The roots in vales AEmonian dug; and seeds,
And flowers, and juices dark: gems unto these,
Sought in the distant East, she adds; and adds
What on the sand the refluent ocean leaves:
More still, the night-long moon collected dew
She brings; the dismal screech-owl's flesh and wings;
The entrails of the wolf ambiguous, wont
His savage face in human guise to wear:
Nor wanted there, the scaly skin which clothes
Th' amphibious snake Cyniphian, long and small:
The beak and head a crow nine ages bore,
She adds. Now was the foreign dame prepar'd,
By help of these, and nameless thousands more,
The promis'd boon to give, the whole she stirs
Deep from the bottom, with a bough long rent,
From the mild olive. Lo! the wither'd branch,
The