Antistrophe
Son. Ah! she hath left my youth— {417}
My mother, my loved mother is no more—
Left me my sufferings to deplore,
Left me a heritage of woe:
Who shall my sorrows soothe?
Thou too, my sister, thy full share shalt know
Of grief, thy heart to rend.
Vain, O my father, vain thy nuptial vows,
Brought to this speedy end:
For when my mother died in ruin sank our house! {425}
The Chorus [in calm blank verse] call on their king to command himself and bear what many have had to bear before.—Admetus knows he must: this calamity has not come without notice. He rouses himself to give orders as to the preparations for burial: the mourning rites shall last a whole year, and shall extend throughout the whole region of Thessaly: the very horses shall have their waving manes cut close, and no sound of flute or instrument of joy shall be heard in the city. {445}
The corpse is slowly carried out, and at last the Stage is vacant. Then the Chorus address themselves to a Choral Ode in memory of the Spirit now passed beneath the earth: the evolutions as usual, carrying them with each Strophe to one end of the Orchestra, and with the Antistrophe back to the Altar.
CHORAL INTERLUDE II
Strophe I
Immortal bliss be thine, {446}
Daughter of Pelias, in the realms below,
Immortal pleasures round thee flow,
Though never there the sun's bright beams shall shine.
Be the black-brow'd Pluto told,
And the Stygian boatman old,
Whose rude hands grasp the oar, the rudder guide,
The dead conveying o'er the tide,—
Let him be told, so rich a freight before
His light skiff never bore;
Tell him that o'er the joyless lakes
The noblest of her sex her dreary passage takes.
Antistrophe I
Thy praise the bards shall tell,
When to their hymning voice the echo rings,
Or when they sweep the solemn strings,
And wake to rapture the seven-chorded shell:
Or in Sparta's jocund bow'rs,
Circling when the vernal hours
Bring the Carnean Feast, whilst through the night
Full-orb'd the high moon rolls her light;
Or where rich Athens, proudly elevate,
Shows her magnific state:
Their voice thy glorious death shall raise,
And swell th' enraptured strain to celebrate thy praise.
Strophe II