Return of the Funeral Procession, headed by the Chorus who remain in the Orchestra; the rest file up the steps onto the stage, Admetus last. The Episode is technically a 'Dirge' between Admetus, whose speeches fall into the rhythm of a Funeral March, and the Chorus, who speak in Strophes and Antistrophes of more elaborate lyric rhythm, often interrupted by the wails of Admetus.
Admetus reaching the top of the Steps from the Orchestra stands face to face with the splendid facade of his Palace. Hateful entrance, hateful aspect of a widowed home! How find rest there, in the heavy woes to which he is now doomed? It is with the dead that rest is found: his heart is in their dark houses, where he has placed a loved hostage torn from him by fate! {931}
Chorus [in Strophe]. Nevertheless he must go forward; he must hide him in the deepest recesses of his Palace with his grief, the helpless groans that yet will nothing aid her whom he will never see more! {938}
Admetus cries that that is the deepest wound of all! Would he had never wedded! To mourn single is pain endurable; to see children wasting with disease, to see death invading the nuptial bed—that is the pang unbearable! {950}
Chorus [in Antistrophe]. Fate is resistless: shall sorrow then have no bounds? Other men have known what it is to lose a wife: and in one or other of innumerable forms misery has found out every son of mortality. {956}
Admetus begins to speak of the life-long mourning for the lost—but the thought is too much for him; why did they hold him back when he would have cast himself into the gaping tomb, and gone the last journey with his love? {963}
The Chorus [in Strophe] think of one they knew who lost a son in the flower of his age, an only son and well worthy of tears: yet he bore his lonely burden like a man, and—courage! his hair is white and he is nearing the end. {969}
Admetus moves a few steps forward and the Procession, advances towards the portal: but the contrast catches his thought between this and another procession towards the same threshold, when, amidst blazing torches of Pelian pine and bridal dances, he led his new wife by the hand, and shouts wished their union happy. Now wails for shouts, black for glistening raiment, and before him the solitary chamber! {983}
Chorus [in Antistrophe]. Trouble has come upon their master all at once, in the midst of prosperity, and on one unschooled in misfortune. But if the wife is gone the love is left. Many have had Admetus's loss: but his gain let him remember: a rescued life. {988}
As if this jarred upon his mind, Admetus turns round and addresses the Chorus, his whole tone changed [the dirge measures giving place to blank verse].