CHORUS. Lo! I too will share with thee thy mourning for her, friend with friend; for this is but her due.
ALCESTIS. My children, ye with your own ears have heard your father’s promise, that he will never wed another wife to set her over you, nor e’er dishonour me.
ADMETUS. Yea, so I promise now, and accomplish it I will.
ALCESTIS. On these conditions receive the children from my hand.
ADMETUS. I receive them, dear pledges by a dear hand given.
ALCESTIS. Take thou my place and be a mother to these babes.
ADMETUS. Sore will be their need when they are reft of thee.
ALCESTIS. O my children, I am passing to that world below, when my life was needed most.
ADMETUS. Ah me, what can I do bereft of thee?
ALCESTIS. Thy sorrow Time will soothe; ’tis the dead who are as naught.
ADMETUS. Take me, O take me, I beseech, with thee ’neath the earth.
ALCESTIS. Enough that I in thy stead am dying.
ADMETUS. O Destiny! of what a wife art thou despoiling me!
ALCESTIS. Lo! the darkness deepens on my drooping eyes.
ADMETUS. Lost indeed am I, if thou, dear wife, wilt really leave me.
ALCESTIS. Thou mayst speak of me as naught, as one whose life is o’er.
ADMETUS. Lift up thy face, leave not thy children.
ALCESTIS. ’Tis not my own free will; O my babes, farewell!
ADMETUS. Look, look on them but once.
ALCESTIS. My end is come.
ADMETUS. What mean’st thou? art leaving us?
ALCESTIS. Farewell! [Dies.]
ADMETUS. Lost! lost! woe is me!
CHORUS. She is gone, the wife of Admetus is no more.
EUMELUS. O my hard fate! My mother has passed to the realms below; she lives no more, dear father ’neath the sun. Alas for her! she leaves us ere her time and to me bequeaths an orphan’s life. Behold that staring eye, those nerveless hands! Hear me, mother, hear me, I implore! ’tis I who call thee now. I thy tender chick, printing my kisses on thy lips.
ADMETUS. She cannot hear, she cannot see; a heavy blow hath fortune dealt us, you children and me.
EUMELUS. O father, I am but a child to have my loving mother leave me here alone; O cruel my fate, alas! and thine, my sister, sharer in my cup of woe. Woe to thee, father! in vain, in vain didst thou take a wife and hast not reached the goal of eld with her; for she is gone before, and now that thou art dead, my mother, our house is all undone.
CHORUS. Admetus, these misfortunes thou must bear. Thou art by no means the first nor yet shalt be the last of men to lose a wife of worth; know this, we all of us are debtors unto death.
ADMETUS. I understand; this is no sudden flight of ill hither; I was ware of it and long have pined. But since I am to carry the dead forth to her burial, stay here with me and to that inexorable god in Hades raise your antiphone. While to all Thessalians in my realm I do proclaim a general mourning for this lady, with hair shorn off and robes of sable hue; all ye who harness steeds for cars, or single horses ride, cut off their manes with the sharp steel. Hush’d be every pipe, silent every lyre throughout the city till twelve full moons are past; for never again shall I bury one whom I love more, no! nor one more loyal to me; honour from me is her due, for she for me hath died, she and she alone.
[Exeunt ADMETUS and EUMELUS, with the other children.]
CHORUS. Daughter of Pelias, be thine a happy life in that sunless home in Hades’ halls! Let Hades know, that swarthy god, and that old man who sits to row and steer alike at his death-ferry, that he hath carried o’er the lake of Acheron in his two-oared skiff a woman peerless amidst her sex. Oft of thee the Muses’ votaries shall sing on the seven-stringed mountain shell and in hymns that need no harp, glorifying thee, oft as the season in his cycle cometh round at Sparta in that Carnean{4} month when all night long the moon sails high o’erhead, yea, and in splendid Athens, happy town. So glorious a theme us thy death bequeathed to tuneful bards. Would it were in my power and range to bring thee to the light from the chambers of Hades and the streams of Cocytus with the oar that sweeps yon nether flood! For thou, and thou alone, most dear of woman, hadst the courage to redeem thy husband from Hades in exchange for thy own life. Light lie the earth above thee, lady! And if ever thy lord take to him a new wife, I vow he will earn my hatred and thy children’s too. His mother had no heart to plunge into the darkness of the tomb for her son, no! nor aged sire. Their own child they had not the courage to rescue, the wretches! albeit they were grey-headed. But thou in thy youth and beauty hast died for thy lord and gone thy way. O be it mine to have for partner such a loving wife! for this lot is rare in life. Surely she should be my helpmeet all my life and never cause one tear.
[Enter HERACLES.]
HERACLES. Mine hosts, dwellers on this Pheraean soil! say, shall I find Admetus in the house?
CHORUS. The son of Pheres is within, Heracles. Tell me what need is bringing thee to the Thessalian land, to visit this city of the Pheraeans?
HERACLES. I am performing a labour for Tirynthian Eurystheus.
CHORUS. And whither art thou journeying? on what wandering art thou forced to go?
HERACLES. To fetch the chariot-steeds of Thracian Diomedes.
CHORUS. How canst thou? art a stranger to the ways of thy host?
HERACLES. I am; for never yet have I gone to the land of the Bistones.
CHORUS. Thou canst not master his horses without fighting.
HERACLES. Still I cannot refuse these labours.
CHORUS. Then shalt thou slay them and return, or thyself be slain and stay there.
HERACLES. It will not be the first hard course that I have run.
CHORUS. And what will be thy gain, suppose thou master their lord?
HERACLES. The steeds will I drive away to the Tirynthian king.
CHORUS. No easy task to bit their jaws.
HERACLES. Easy enough, unless their nostrils vomit fire.
CHORUS. With ravening jaws they rend the limbs of men.
HERACLES. Thou speakest of the food of mountain beasts, not of horses.
CHORUS. Their mangers blood-bedabbled thou shalt see.
HERACLES. Whose son doth he who feeds them boast to be?
CHORUS. Ares’ son, king of the golden targe of Thrace.
HERACLES. This toil again is but a piece of my ill-luck; hard it ever is and still is growing steeper, if I with Ares’ own-begotten sons must fight, first with Lycaon, next with Cycnus, while now I am bound on this third contest to engage the horses and their master. Yet shall no man ever see Alcmena’s son trembling at his foemen’s prowess.
CHORUS. See where Admetus, lord of this land, comes in person from the palace forth.
[Enter ADMETUS.]
ADMETUS. Hail! son of Zeus, from Perseus sprung.
HERACLES. Joy to thee also, Admetus, king of Thessaly.
ADMETUS. Would there were! yet thy kindly heart I know full well.
HERACLES. Why dost thou appear with head shorn thus in mourning?
ADMETUS. To-day I am to