The Argonautica

While he coiled about, the maiden came before his eyes,

calling upon Sleep, the helper, highest of all gods,

in her sweet voice to enchant the beast; and she cried to the queen

who roams through night beneath earth to favor the venture.

Jason followed behind her in fear; but already the serpent,

charmed by the song, began loosening his long backbone

of his earthborn coil, extending out myriad circles,

as a black wave rolls on over sluggish waters,

mute and without a roar. Yet even then the serpent

longed to raise up high his head of dreadful aspect

and trap the pair, clenched in his vast, murderous jaws.

But Medea dipped one fresh, tender shoot of juniper

into her potion, with spells sprinkled untainted drugs

down on his eyes; the sweet scent of the drug all around him

cast him to sleep. His jaw sank there in its place

resting against the earth, while far back behind it

his infinite coils stretched through the many-trunked woodland.

There Jason took the Golden Fleece down from the oak tree,

at Medea's command; she stayed there, fixed and steadfast,

kept rubbing the monster's head with drugs, until Jason

himself bade Medea turn back toward his ship,

and together they left the deep-shaded grove of Ares behind.

As a girl catches under her delicate gown the shimmer

of half-full moonlight rising high above the chamber roof,