Inferno, C. 18.
"Behold that lofty shade, who this way tends,
And seems too woe-begone to drop a tear;
How yet the regal aspect he retains!
'Tis Jason—
—He who with tokens and fair witching words
Hypsipyle beguil'd—
Such is the guilt condemns him to this pain;
Here too Medea's injuries are aveng'd!"—
Carey.
And Chaucer, in relating the same story, begins with a burst of generous indignation:
Thou root[19] of false lovers, Duke Jason,
Thou slayer, devourer, and confusion
Of gentil women, gentil creatures!
The story of his double perfidy is told and commented on in the same chivalrous feeling: and the old poet concludes with characteristic tenderness and simplicity—
This was the mede of loving, and guerdon
That Medea received of Duke Jason,
Right for her truth and for her kindnesse,
That loved him better than herself I guesse!
And lefte her father and her heritage:
And of Jason this is the vassalage
That in his dayes was never none yfound
So false a lover going on the ground.
It is in the same beautiful spirit of reverence to the best virtues of our sex, that Alcestis, the wife of Admetus, who sacrificed her life to prolong that of her husband, is honoured above all other heroines of classical story. She has even been elevated into a kind of presiding divinity,—a second Venus, with nobler attributes,—and in her new existence is feigned to be the consort and companion of Love himself.
Another peculiarity of the poetry of the middle ages, was the worship paid to the daisy, (la Marguerite) as symbolical of all that is lovely in women. Why so lowly a flower should take precedence of the queenly lily and the sumptuous rose, is not very clear; but it seems to have originated with one of the old Provençal poets, whose mistress bore the name of Marguerite; and afterwards it became a fashion and a kind of poetical mythology.[20]