Euripides' ALCESTIS Complete

Translated by Gilbert Murray. - Cf. An Introduction to Euripides' Alcestis by Murray

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74 pages - You are on Page 42

Admetus: I called not thee to burial of my dead,
Nor count thy presence here a welcome thing.
My wife shall wear no robe that thou canst bring,
Nor needs thy help in aught. There was a day
We craved thy love, when I was on my way
Deathward--thy love, which bade thee stand aside
And watch, grey-bearded, while a young man died!
And now wilt mourn for her? Thy fatherhood!
Thou wast no true begetter of my blood,
Nor she my mother who dares call me child.
Oh, she was barren ever; she beguiled
Thy folly with some bastard of a thrall.
Here is thy proof! This hour hath shown me all
Thou art; and now I am no more thy son.
'Fore God, among all cowards can scarce be one
Like thee. So grey, so near the boundary
Of mortal life, thou wouldst not, durst not, die
To save thy son! Thou hast suffered her to do
Thine office, her, no kin to me nor you,
Yet more than kin! Henceforth she hath all the part
Of mother, yea, and father in my heart.
And what a glory had been thine that day,
Dying to save thy son--when, either way,
Thy time must needs be brief. Thy life has had
Abundance of the things that make men glad;
A crown that came to thee in youth; a son
To do thee worship and maintain thy throne--
Not like a childless king, whose folk and lands
Lie helpless, to be torn by strangers' hands.

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