SEMICH.  Behold, behold; lo! she doth come from the house, and her husband with her.  Cry out, O groan, O land of Pheres, for the most excellent woman, wasting with sickness, departing beneath the earth to the infernal Pluto.  Never will I aver that marriage brings more joy than grief, forming my conjectures both from former things, and beholding this fortune of the king; who, when he has lost this most excellent wife, will thenceforward pass a life not worthy to be called life.[17]

ALCESTIS, ADMETUS, EUMELUS, CHORUS.

ALC.  Thou Sun, and thou light of day, and ye heavenly eddies of the fleeting clouds—­

ADM.  He beholds[18] thee and me, two unhappy creatures, having done nothing to the Gods, for which thou shouldst die.

ALC.  O earth, and ye roofs of the palace, and thou bridal bed of my native Iolcos.

ADM.  Lift up thyself, unhappy one, desert me not; but entreat the powerful Gods to pity.

ALC.  I see—­I see the two-oared boat—­and the ferryman of the dead, holding his hand on the pole—­Charon even now calls me—­“Why dost thou delay? haste, thou stoppest us here”—­with such words vehement he hastens me.

ADM.  Ah me! a bitter voyage this thou speakest of!  Oh! unhappy one, how do we suffer!

ALC.  He pulls me, some one pulls me—­do you not see?—­to the hall of the dead, the winged Pluto, staring from beneath his black eyebrows—­What wilt thou do?—­let me go—­what a journey am I most wretched going!

ADM.  Mournful to thy friends, and of these especially to me and to thy children, who have this grief in common.

ALC.  Leave off[19] supporting me, leave off now, lay me down, I have no strength in my feet.  Death is near, and darkling night creeps upon mine eyes—­my children, my children, no more your mother is—­no more.—­Farewell, my children, long may you view this light!

ADM.  Ah me!  I hear this sad word, and more than any death to me.  Do not by the Gods have the heart to leave me:  do not by those children, whom thou wilt make orphans:  but rise, be of good courage:  for, thee dead, I should no longer be:  for on thee we depend both to live, and not to live:  for thy love we adore.

ALC.  Admetus, thou seest both thy affairs and mine, in what state they are, I wish to tell thee, ere I die, what I would have done.  I, honoring thee, and causing thee at the price of my life to view this light, die, it being in my power not to die, for thee:  but though I might have married a husband from among the Thessalians whom I would, and have lived in a palace blessed with regal sway, was not willing to live, bereft of thee, with my children orphans; nor did I spare myself, though possessing the gifts of bloomy youth, wherein I delighted.  And yet thy father and thy mother forsook thee, though they had well arrived at a point of life, in which they might have died, and nobly delivered their son, and died with glory:  for thou wert their only