The Argonautica

and now both traveler and gatekeeper longed for sleep,

and even a mother whose children had died lay surrendered

to deepest sleep, which completely enfolded her grieving body.

No barking of dogs through the city continued, no echoing

noise; silence possessed the blackening darkness of night.

But certainly sweet sleep did not overtake Medea.

For Aeson's son, her longing awakened many cares within her,

fearing the pitiless strength of the bulls that were fated to kill him

by shameful doom there on the ploughland, the Plain of Ares.

Again and again her heart within her breast beat wildly,

like sunlight's gleam that leaps and dances within a dwelling,

cast upward from fresh water poured inside a cauldron

or perhaps in a bucket; the light now this way, now that way

darts as the whirling water sends it rapidly leaping;

just so in the maiden's breast her heart twisted and quivered.

Tears from her eyes flowed down in compassion; and always within her

pain was wearing her, smoldering on through her flesh, round the slender

fibers and up to the lowest tendon there at the nape, beneath the head,

where grief penetrates most sharply whenever the tireless Loves

drive their distresses hard inward against the mind.

At one moment her thought said to give the charms taming the bulls,

at another not; then said that she too should perish herself;

then again, neither to die herself nor offer the charms,

but simply keep quiet and bear her ruin as it came.