More than himself? Oh no! it shall not be?
Thou perish, O Alcestis! in the flower
Of thy young beauty!—perish, and destroy
Not him, not him alone, but us, but all,
Who as a child adore thee! Desolate
Would be the throne, the kingdom, reft of thee.
And think’st thou not of those whose tender years
Demand thy care?—thy children! think of them!
O thou, the source of each domestic joy,
Thou, in whose life alone Admetus lives,