"This purpose—that, throughout my earthly life,
Mine should be mingled and made up with thine—
And we two prove one force and play one part
And do one thing. Since death divides the pair,
'Tis well that I depart and thou remain
Who wast to me as spirit is to flesh:
Let the flesh perish, be perceived no more,
So thou, the spirit that informed the flesh,
Bend yet awhile, a very flame above
The rift I drop into the darkness by—
And bid remember, flesh and spirit once
Worked in the world, one body, for man's sake.
Never be that abominable show
Of passive death without a quickening life—
Admetos only, no Alkestis now!"
It is so that the man speaks to and of the woman, in Balaustion's and Browning's Alkestis.
And the woman, answering, declares that the reality of their joint existence lies not in her, but in him:
". . . 'What! thou soundest in my soul
To depths below the deepest, reachest good
By evil, that makes evil good again,
And so allottest to me that I live,
And not die—letting die, not thee alone,
But all true life that lived in both of us?
Look at me once ere thou decree the lot!'
* * * * *
Therewith her whole soul entered into his,
He looked the look back, and Alkestis died."
But when she reaches the nether world—"the downward-dwelling people"—she is rejected as a deceiver: "This is not to die," says the Queen of Hades, for her death is a mockery, since it doubles the life of him she has left behind:
"'Two souls in one were formidable odds:
Admetos must not be himself and thou!'
* * * * *
And so, before the embrace relaxed a whit,
The lost eyes opened, still beneath the look;
And lo, Alkestis was alive again."