Chorus.

Among the covetable proofs of love.

As for thy tribute of adornment, -no!
Ne'er shall she don it, ne'er in debt to thee
Be buried! What is thine, that keep thou still:
Then it behooved thee to commiserate
When I was perishing: but thou, who stood'st
Foot-free o' the snare, wast acquiescent then
That I, the young, should die, not thou, the old,
Wilt thou lament this corpse thyself hast slain?
Thou wast not, then, true father to this flesh,
Nor she, who makes profession of my birth,
And styles herself my mother.

Pheres. Never did I receive it as a law

Hereditary, no, nor Greek at all,

That sires in place of sons were bound to die.

Long I account the time to pass below,
And brief my span of days; yet sweet the same.

Shrewdly hast thou contrived how not to die
For evermore now; 'tis but still persuade
The wife for the time being-take thy place!
What, and thy friends who would not do the like
These dost thou carp at, craven thus thyself?
Crouch and be silent, craven! Comprehend

That, if thou lovest so that life of thine,

Cho.

Why every body loves his own life, too;

So, good words henceforth! If thou speak us ill,
Many and true an ill thing shalt thou hear!

But the unspeakable wrangle runs on page after page, for all the sound admonition of the chorus. Admetus at last bids the funeral train proceed.

The scene returns to Heracles in the house. The free manner of the guest displeased the servant detailed to wait upon him. This testy old fellow soliloquizes to the guest's disadvantage as follows (we abridge):

Here am I helping make at home

A guest, some fellow ripe for wickedness,
Robber or pirate, while she goes her way
Out of her house: and neither was it mine
To follow in procession, nor stretch forth
Hand, wave my lady dear a last farewell,
Lamenting who to me and all of us
Domestics was a mother: myriad harms
She used to ward away from every one,
And mollify her husband's ireful mood.
I ask, then, do I justly hate or no

This guest, this interloper on our grief?

There follows, in Mr. Browning's poem, a long passage of the English poet's own, very nobly idealizing and transfiguring Heracles. All this changed Heracles is found, by a creative poetic eye, between the lines of Euripides-who himself simply makes Heracles speak out with rough good-humor to the vinegar-visaged attendant, thus:

Her.

Thou, there!

Why look'st so solemn and so thought-absorbed ?
To guests, a servant should not sour-faced be,

But do the honors with a mind urbane.

Of mortals with assurance he shall last
The coming morrow: for, what's born of chance
Invisibly proceeds the way it will,

Not to be learned, no fortune-teller's prize.

This, therefore, having heard and known through me,
Gladden thyself! Drink! Count the day-by-day
Existence thine, and all the other-chance!

Wilt not thou, then, -discarding overmuch
Mournfulness, do away with this shut door,
Come drink along with me, be-garlanded

This fashion? Do so-and-I well know what-
From this stern mood, this shrunk-up state of mind,
The pit-pat fall o' the flagon-juice down throat
Soon will dislodge thee from bad harborage!

It soon comes out, for the enlightenment of Heracles, that it was Alcestis herself who had died. Heracles suffers a violent revulsion from gay to sad. He exclaims:

Her. But I divined it! seeing, as I did,

His eye that ran with tears, his close-clipt hair,

His countenance !

With wreath on head?

And do I revel yet

But-thou to hold thy peace,

Nor tell me what a woe oppressed my friend!

Where is he gone to bury her? Where am I
Το go and find her?

Heracles takes his resolution.

rescue Alcestis yet.

He will go to the tomb and

Here are his words:

Her. O much-enduring heart and hand of mine!

I will go lie in wait for Death, black-stoled
King of the corpses! I shall find him, sure,
Drinking beside the tomb, o' the sacrifice:
And if I lie in ambuscade, and leap
Out of my lair, and seize-encircle him
Till one hand join the other round about-

There lives not who shall pull him out from me,

Rib-mauled, before he let the woman go!
But even say I miss the booty—say,

Death comes not to the boltered blood-why then
Down go I, to the unsunned dwelling-place

O' Koré and the king there-make demand,
Confident I shall bring Alkestis back,

So as to put her in the hands of him

My host, that housed me, never drove me off:
Though stricken with sore sorrow, hid the stroke,
Being a noble heart and honoring me!

Meantime the procession returns from the grave. With admirable amplification of pathetic speech and circumstance Euripides displays the grief suffered by Admetus revisiting his "chambers emptied of delight." The chorus intervene with their exasperating commonplace of consolation. They end by chanting a high strain in celebration of the inexorableness of Necessity. This we give in the rhymed version of Potter:

STROPHE I.

My venturous foot delights

To tread the Muses' arduous heights:
Their hallow'd haunts I love to explore,
And listen to their lore:

Yet never could my searching mind
Aught, like Necessity, resistless find:

No herb, of sovereign power to save,
Whose virtues Orpheus joy'd to trace,
And wrote them in the rolls of Thrace;
Nor all that Phoebus gave,
Instructing the Asclepian train,

When various ills the human frame assail,
To heal the wound, to soothe the pain,
'Gainst her stern force avail.

ANTISTROPHE I.

Of all the powers divine

Alone none dares approach her shrine:
To her no hallow'd image stands,

No altar she commands;

In vain the victim's blood would flow;
She never deigns to hear the suppliant now.
Never to me may'st thou appear,
Dread goddess, with severer mien,
That oft, in life's past tranquil scene,
Thou hast been known to wear.

By thee Jove works his stern behest:
Thy force subdues ev'n Scythia's stubborn steel;
Nor ever does thy rugged breast
The touch of pity feel.

STROPHE II.

And now, with ruin pleased,

On thee, O king, her hands have seized,
And bound thee in her iron chain:
Yet her fell force sustain ;

For, from the gloomy realms of night
No tears recall the dead to life's sweet light;
No virtue, though to heaven allied,
Saves from the inevitable doom:
Heroes and sons of gods have died,

And sunk into the tomb.

Dear, while our eyes her presence bless'd;
Dear, in the gloomy mansions of the dead:
Most generous she, the noblest, best,
Who graced thy nuptial bed.

ANTISTROPHE II.

Thy wife's sepulchral mound

Deem not as common worthless ground,
That swells their breathless bodies o'er,

Who die, and are no more.

No: be it honor'd as a shrine

Raised high, and hallow'd to some power divine.

The traveler, as he passes by,

Shall thither bend his devious way;

With reverence gaze, and with a sigh

Smite on his breast, and say,

"She died of old to save her lord;

Now bless'd among the bless'd. Hail, power revered ;

To us thy wonted grace afford?"

Such vows shall be preferr'd,