Alcestis

Euripides

Euripides. The Plays of Euripides, Translated into English Prose from the Text of Paley. Vol. I. Coleridge, Edward P., translator. London: George Bell and Sons, 1906.

  1. What mean’st thou? art leaving us?
Alcestis
  1. Farewell!
Admetus
  1. Lost! lost! woe is me!
Chorus
  1. She is gone, the wife of Admetus is no more.
Eumelus
  1. O my hard fate! My mother has passed to the realms below; she lives no more,
  2. 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!
  3. Hear me, mother, hear me, I implore! ’tis I who call thee now, I thy tender chick, printing my kisses on thy lips.
Admetus
  1. She cannot hear, she cannot see;
  2. a heavy blow hath fortune dealt us, you children and me.
Eumelus
  1. O father, I am but a child to have my loving mother leave me here alone; O cruel my fate, alas!
  2. 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,
  3. my mother, our house is all undone.
Chorus
  1. 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
  1. 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
    raise your antiphone.
  2. 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.
  3. 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
  1. Daughter of Pelias, be thine a happy life in that sunless home in Hades’ halls! Let Hades know, that swarthy god,
  2. 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.
Chorus
  1. Oft of thee the Muses’ votaries shall sing on the seven-stringed mountain shell and in hymns that need no harp,[*](i.e. Epic poetry.) glorifying thee, oft as the season in his cycle cometh round at Sparta in that Carnean[*](A reference to the Carnean festival, held in honour of Apollo, by the Dorians of Peloponnesus, especially by the Spartans, for nine successive days in the month Metageitnion, i.e. April, hence called the Carnean month.) month
  2. when all night long the moon sails high o’erhead, yea, and in splendid Athens, happy town. So glorious a theme has thy death bequeathed to tuneful bards.