Zeus
At my command all doors are set ajar.
Alcmena
The miserable forebodings of the night
Have fallen from me like the gossamer
Which spiders weave until a master-hand
Sweeps clean their tracery. Mark you a change
In me, as I in you?
Zeus
I am unchanging,
But, till this moment, me you have not known.
Alcmena
Or known myself save as a falling leaf,
The toy of winds, uncherished and unloved,
Gliding to earth and slow decay in earth
Of what was green and young.
Zeus
When you were younger
And guarded still the pitiable illusion
That life is good and destiny exalted,
Did you not dream perhaps of sacrifice
In which yourself as immolated victim
Should satisfy delirious desire,
Wedded at last in death with strength,—which marriage
Humanly shaped has never learned to yield?