I go, but louder than all thought doth cry
Anger, which maketh man’s worst misery.“[[31]]
But even yet she cannot strike: one thing more is needed to nerve her hand, and it comes only too soon. A messenger is seen flying toward them from the palace in frantic haste. As he comes within hail, he shouts to Medea to flee—both Creon and the princess lie dead from the effects of her poisoned gift, and she has not a moment to lose. Her own life will surely be demanded for the crime. Medea remains immovable, smiling in awful joy at the news. She makes the man relate every detail of the ghastly scene in the palace; and for just so long as the story takes to tell, she clasps revenge complete and satisfying. But a moment later the thing has shrivelled in her hand; for there is now no hope to save her children.
“Oh, up, and get thine armour on,
My heart!...
Take up thy sword, O poor right hand of mine,
Thy sword: then onward to the thin-drawn line
Where life turns agony.”[[31]]
She goes into the house; and a moment later the shrieks of the children are heard. They have hardly ceased when Jason rushes in, bent on carrying off his sons before the king’s avengers can capture them. A woman warns him of what is passing within; and as the agonized father bursts open the door of the house, Medea appears on the roof, in the dragon-chariot of the Sun, with the poor dead bodies lying at her feet. There is something weird in this touch of the supernatural; but there is something symbolic too. For Medea is a woman no longer: with her own hand, driven by foul wrong and an untamed heart, she has cast humanity away.
We need not follow to the end the last clash of the two bitter spirits. Jason pleads piteously for one poor boon: “Give me the dead to weep and make their grave.” But the fury that has smitten him is inexorable.