ADMETUS
Alas! How bitter to me is that ferrying of which you speak! O my unhappy one, how we suffer!
ALCESTIS (chanting)
He drags me, he drags me away-
Do you not see?-
To the House of the Dead, The Winged One Glaring under dark brows, Hades!-What is it you do?
Set me free!-
What a path must I travel, O most hapless of women!
ADMETUS
O piteous to those that love you, above all to me and to these children who sorrow in this common grief!
ALCESTIS (chanting)
Loose me, Oh, loose me now;
Lay me down;
All strength is gone from my feet.
(She falls back in the throne.)
Hades draws near!
Dark night falls on my eyes, My children, my children, Never more, Oh, never more Shall your mother be yours!
O children, farewell, Live happy in the light of day!
ADMETUS (chanting)
Alas! I hear this unhappy speech, and for me it is worse than all death. Ah! By the Gods, do not abandon me! Ah! By our children, whom you leave motherless, take heart! If you die, I become as nothing; in you we have our life and death; we revere your love.
ALCESTIS (recovering herself)
Admetus, you see the things I suffer; and now before I die Imean to tell you what I wish.
To show you honour and-at the cost of my life-that you may still behold the light, I die; and yet I might have lived and wedded any in Thessaly I chose, and dwelt with happiness in a royal home. But, torn from you, I would not live with fatherless children, nor have Ihoarded up those gifts of youth in which I found delight. Yet he who begot you, she who brought you forth, abandoned you when it had been beautiful in them to die, beautiful to die with dignity to save their son! They had no child but you, no hope if you were dead that other children might be born to them. Thus I should have lived my life out, and you too, and you would not lament as now, made solitary from your wife, that you must rear our children motherless!
But these things are a God's doing and are thus.
Well! Do not forget this gift, for I shall ask-not a recompense, since nothing is more precious than life, but-only what is just, as you yourself will say, since if you have not lost your senses you must love these children no less than I. Let them be masters in my house;marry not again, and set a stepmother over them, a woman harsher than I, who in her jealousy will lift her hand against my children and yours. Ah! not this, let not this be, I entreat you! The new stepmother hates the first wife's children, the viper itself is not more cruel. The son indeed finds a strong rampart in his father-but you, my daughter, how shall you live your virgin life out in happiness? How will you fare with your father's new wife? Ah! Let her not cast evil report upon you and thus wreck your marriage in the height of your youth! You will have no mother, O my child, to give you in marriage, to comfort you in childbed when none is tenderer than a mother!
And I must die. Not to-morrow. nor to-morrow's morrow comes this misfortune on me, but even now I shall be named with those that are no more. Farewell! Live happy! You, my husband, may boast you had the best of wives; and you, my children, that you lost the best of mothers!
(She falls back.)
LEADER
Take heart! I do not hesitate to speak for him. This he will do, unless he has lost his senses.
ADMETUS
It shall be so, it shall be! Have no fear! And since I held you living as my wife, so, when dead, you only shall be called my wife, and in your place no bride of Thessaly shall salute me hers; no other woman is noble enough for that, no other indeed so beautiful of face. My children shall suffice me; I pray the Gods I may enjoy them, since you we have not enjoyed.
I shall wear mourning for you, O my wife, not for one year but all my days, abhorring the woman who bore me, hating my father-for they loved me in words, not deeds. But you-to save my life you give the dearest thing you have! Should I not weep then, losing such a wife as you?
I shall make an end of merry drinking parties, and of flower-crowned feasts and of the music which possessed my house. Never again shall I touch the lyre, never again shall I raise my spirits to sing to the Libyan flute-for you have taken from me all my joy.
Your image, carven by the skilled hands of artists, shall be laid in our marriage-bed; I shall clasp it, and my hands shall cling to it and I shall speak your name and so, not having you, shall think I have my dear wife in my arms-a cold delight, I know, but it will lighten the burden of my days. Often you will gladden me, appearing in my dreams; for sweet it is to look on those we love in dreams, however brief the night.
Ah! If I had the tongue and song of Orpheus so that I might charm Demeter's Daughter or her Lord, and snatch you back from Hades, would go down to hell; and neither Pluto's dog nor Charon, Leader of the Dead, should hinder me until I had brought your life back to the light!
At least await me there whenever I shall die, and prepare the house where you will dwell with me. I shall lay a solemn charge upon these children to stretch me in the same cedar shroud with you, and lay my side against your side; for even in death let me not be separate from you, you who alone were faithful to me!
LEADER (to ADMETUS)
And I also will keep this sad mourning with you, as a friend with a friend; for she is worthy of it.
ALCESTIS
O my children, you have heard your father say that never will he set another wife over you and never thus insult me.
ADMETUS
Again I say it, and will perform it too!
ALCESTIS (placing the children's hands in his)Then take these children from my hand.
ADMETUS
I take them-dear gifts from a dear hand.
ALCESTIS
Now you must be the mother for me to my children.
ADMETUS
It must be so, since they are robbed of you.
ALCESTIS
O children, I should have lived my life out-and I go to the Underworld.
ADMETUS
Alas! What shall I do, left alone by you?
ALCESTIS
Time will console you. The dead are nothing.
ADMETUS
Take me with you, by the Gods! Take me to the Underworld!
ALCESTIS
It is enough that I should die-for you.
ADMETUS
O Fate, what a wife you steal from me!
ALCESTIS (growing faint)
My dimmed eyes are heavily oppressed.
ADMETUS