O dearest friends, when well with you, and with this land, recall
Me, as about my bowed head Death’s purple shadows fall.”
Then the chorus, in rhythmic dance sang:—
“If it be meet—O Goddess thou, unseen whom all men dread,
If it be meet—O awful King who rulest o’er the dead,
Be pitiful unto this man, a stranger in the land,
And gently, without pain acute, conduct him by the hand
From out the world of light into the Stygian deeps below,
Remember how that ever here, he suffered want and woe!
Ye polished iron gates unclose, and as ye backward roll,