medea

Very effective is this scene in which, after a soliloquy of agonizing doubt and hesitation, she resolves on this awful deed:.
             In vain, my children, have I brought you up, .
             Borne all the cares and pangs of motherhood, .
             And the sharp pains of childbirth undergone. .
             In you, alas, was treasured many a hope .
             Of loving sustentation in my age, .
             Of tender laying out when I was dead, .
             Such as all men might envy. .
             Those sweet thoughts are mine no more, for now bereft of you .
             I must wear out a drear and joyless life, .
             And you will nevermore your mother see, .
             Nor live as ye have done beneath her eye. .
             Alas, my sons, why do you gaze on me, .
             Why smile upon your mother that last smile? .
             Ah me! What shall I do? My purpose melts .
             Beneath the bright looks of my little ones. .
             I cannot do it. Farewell, my resolve, .
             I will bear off my children from this land. .
             Why should I seek to wring their father's heart, .
             When that same act will doubly wring my own? .
             I will not do it. Farewell, my resolve. .
             What has come o'er me? Shall I let my foes .
             Triumph, that I may let my friends go free? .
             I'll brace me to the deed. Base that I was .
             To let a thought of wickedness cross my soul. .
             Children, go home. Whoso accounts it wrong .
             To be attendant at my sacrifice, .
             Let him stand off; my purpose is unchanged. .
             Forego my resolutions, O my soul, .
             Force not the parent's hand to slay the child. .
             Their presence where we will go will gladden thee. .
             By the avengers that in Hades reign, .
             It never shall be said that I have left .
             My children for my foes to trample on. .
             It is decreed. .
             Jason, who has come to punish the murderess of his bride, hears that his children have perished too, and Medea herself appears to him in the chariot of the sun, bestowed by Helios, the sun-god, upon his descendants. She revels in the anguish of her faithless husband.
             "I do not leave my children's bodies with thee; I take them with me that I may bury them in Hera's precinct. And for thee, who didst me all that evil, I prophesy an evil doom.