LITMIR.BIZ

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me to your cheer?

      ATTENDANT. Yes, for his regard would not let him send thee from his door.

      HERACLES. Unhappy husband, what a wife hast thou lost!

      ATTENDANT. We are all undone, not she alone.

      HERACLES. I knew it when I saw his streaming eye, shorn head and downcast look, yet did he persuade me, saying it was a stranger he was bearing to burial. So I did constrain myself and passed his gates and sat drinking in his hospitable halls, when he was suffering thus. And have I wreathed my head and do I revel still? But—thou to hold thy peace when such a crushing sorrow lay upon the house! Where is he burying her? Whither shall I go to find her?

      ATTENDANT. Beside the road that leadeth straight to Larissa, shalt thou see her carved tomb outside the suburb. [Exit.]

      HERACLES. O heart, O soul, both sufferers oft, now show the mettle of that son Tirynthian Alcmena, daughter of Electryon, bare to Zeus. For I must save this woman, dead but now, setting Alcestis once again within this house, and to Admetus this kind service render. So I will go and watch for Death the black-robed monarch of the dead, and him methinks I shall find as he drinks of the blood-offering near the tomb. And if, from ambush rushing, once I catch and fold him in my arms’ embrace, none shall ever wrest him thence with smarting ribs, ere he give up the woman unto me. But should I fail to find my prey and he come not to the clotted blood, I will go to the sunless home of those beneath the earth, to Persephone and her king, and make to them my prayer, sure that I shall bring Alcestis up again, to place her in the hands of him, my host, who welcomed me to his house nor drove me thence, though fortune smote him hard, but this his noble spirit strove to hide out of regard for me. What host more kind than him in Thessaly? or in the homes of Hellas? Wherefore shall he never say his generous deeds were lavished on a worthless wretch. [Exit.]

      [Enter ADMETUS and CHORUS.]

      ADMETUS. Ah me! I loathe this entering in, and loathe to see my widowed home. Woe, woe is me! Whither shall I go? Where stand? what say? or what suppress? Would God that I were dead! Surely in an evil hour my mother gave me birth. The dead I envy, and would fain be as they, and long to dwell within their courts. No joy to me to see the light, no joy to tread the earth; such a hostage death hath reft me of and handed o’er to Hades.

      CHORUS. Move forward, go within the shelter of thy house.

      ADMETUS. Woe is me!

      CHORUS. Thy sufferings claim these cries of woe.

      ADMETUS. Ah me!

      CHORUS. Through anguish hast thou gone, full well I know.

      ADMETUS. Alas! alas!

      CHORUS. Thou wilt not help the dead one whit.

      ADMETUS. O misery!

      CHORUS. Nevermore to see thy dear wife face to face is grief indeed.

      ADMETUS. Thy words have probed the sore place in my heart. What greater grief can come to man than the loss of a faithful wife? Would I had never married or shared with her my home! I envy those ’mongst men who have nor wife nor child. Theirs is but one life; to grieve for that is no excessive burden; but to see children fall ill and bridal beds emptied by death’s ravages is too much to bear, when one might go through life without wife or child.

      CHORUS. A fate we cannot cope with is come upon us.

      ADMETUS. Woe is me!

      CHORUS. But thou to sorrow settest no limit.

      ADMETUS. Ah! ah!

      CHORUS. ’Tis hard to bear, but still—

      ADMETUS. Woe is me!

      CHORUS. Thou art not the first to lose—

      ADMETUS. O! woe is me!

      CHORUS. A wife; misfortune takes a different shape for every man she plagues.

      ADMETUS. O the weary sorrow! O the grief for dear ones dead and gone! Why didst thou hinder me from plunging into the gaping grave, there to lay me down and die with her, my peerless bride? Then would Hades for that one have gotten these two faithful souls at once, crossing the nether lake together.

      CHORUS. I had a kinsman once, within whose home died his only son, worthy of a father’s tears; yet in spite of that he bore his grief resignedly, childless though he was, his hair already turning grey, himself far on in years, upon life’s downward track.

      ADMETUS. O house of mine, how can I enter thee? how can I live here, now that fortune turns against me? Ah me! How wide the gulf ’twixt then and now! Then with torches cut from Pelion’s pines, with marriage hymns I entered in, holding my dear wife’s hand; and at our back a crowd of friends with cheerful cries, singing the happy lot of my dead wife and me, calling us a noble pair made one, children both of highborn lineage; but now the voice of woe instead of wedding hymns, and robes of black instead of snowy white usher me into my house to my deserted couch.

      CHORUS. Hard upon prosperous fortune came this sorrow to thee, a stranger to adversity; yet hast thou saved thy soul alive. Thy wife is dead and gone; her love she leaves with thee. What new thing is here? Death ere now from many a man hath torn a wife.

      ADMETUS. My friends, I count my dead wife’s lot more blest than mine, for all it seems not so; for nevermore can sorrow touch her for ever; all her toil is over, and glorious is her fame. While I, who had no right to live, have passed the bounds of fate only to live a life of misery; I know it now. For how shall I endure to enter this my house? Whom shall I address, by whom be answered back, to find aught joyful in my entering in? Whither shall I turn? Within the desolation will drive me forth, whensoe’er I see my widowed couch, the seat whereon she sat, the floor all dusty in the house, and my babes falling at my knees with piteous tears for their mother, while my servants mourn the good mistress their house hath lost. These are the sorrows in my home, while abroad the marriages among Thessalians and the thronging crowds of women will drive me mad,{5} for I can never bear to gaze upon the compeers of my wife. And whoso is my foe will taunt me thus, “Behold him living in his shame, a wretch who quailed at death himself, but of his coward heart gave up his wedded wife instead, and escaped from Hades; doth he deem himself a man after that? And he loathes his parents, though himself refused to die.” Such ill report shall I to my evils add. What profit, then, my friends, for me to live, in fame and fortune ruined.

      CHORUS. Myself have traced the Muses’ path, have soared amid the stars, have laid my hold on many a theme, and yet have found naught stronger than necessity, no spell inscribed on Thracian tablets written there by Orpheus, the sweet singer, no! nor aught among the simples culled by Phoebus for the toiling race of men, and given to Asclepius’ sons. The only goddess she, whose altar or whose image man cannot approach; victims she heedeth not. O come not to me, dread goddess, in greater might than heretofore in my career. Even Zeus requires thy aid to bring to pass whatso he wills. Thou too it is that by sheer force dost bend the steel among the Chalybes; nor is there any pity in thy relentless nature.

      This is the goddess that hath gripped thee too in chains thou canst not ’scape; yet steel thy heart, for all thy weeping ne’er will bring to light again the dead from the realms below. Even sons of gods perish in darkness in the hour of death. We loved her while she was with us, we love her still though dead; noblest of her sex was she, the wife thou tookest to thy bed. Her tomb let none regard as the graves of those who die and are no more, but let her have honours equal with the gods, revered by every traveller; and many a one will cross the road and read this verse aloud, “This is she that died in days gone by to save her lord; now is she a spirit blest. Hail, lady revered; be kind to us!” Such glad greeting shall she have. But see, Admetus! yonder, I believe, comes Alcmena’s son toward thy hearth.

      [Enter HERACLES with a veiled woman.]

      HERACLES. Admetus, to a friend we should speak freely, not hold our peace and harbour in our hearts complaints. I came to thee in thy hour of sorrow and claimed the right to prove myself thy friend, but thou wouldst not tell me that she, thy wife, lay stretched in death; but didst make me a welcome guest

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