But your life and your spirit are safe.
She is dead, She has left your love.
Is this so new?
Ere now many men Death has severed from wives.
ADMETUS (speaking)
O friends, whatsoever may be thought by others, to me it seems that my wife's fate is happier than mine. Now, no pain ever shall touch her again; she has reached the noble end of all her sufferings. But I, I who should have died, I have escaped my fate, only to drag out a wretched life. Only now do I perceive it.
How shall I summon strength to enter this house? Whom shall Igreet? Who will greet me in joy at my coming? Whither shall I turn my steps? I shall be driven forth by solitude when I see my bed widowed of my wife, empty the chairs on which she sat, a dusty floor beneath my roof, my children falling at my knees and calling for their mother, and the servants lamenting for the noble lady lost from the house!
Such will be my life within the house. Without, I shall be driven from marriage-feasts and gatherings of the women of Thessaly. Ishall not endure to look upon my wife's friends. Those who hate me will say: 'See how he lives in shame, the man who dared not die, the coward who gave his wife to Hades in his stead! Is that a man? He hates his parents, yet he himself refused to die!'
This evil fame I have added to my other sorrows. O my friends, what then avails it that I live, if I must live in misery and shame?
(He covers his head with his robe, and crouches in abject misery on the steps of his Palace.)CHORUS (singing)
strophe 1
I have lived with the Muses And on lofty heights:
Many doctrines have I learned;
But Fate is above us all.
Nothing avails against Fate Neither the Thracian tablets Marked with Orphic symbols, Nor the herbs given by Phoebus To the children of Asclepius To heal men of their sickness.
antistrophe 1
None can come near to her altars, None worship her statues;She regards not our sacrifice.
O sacred goddess, Bear no more hardly upon me Than in days overpast!
With a gesture Zeus judges, But the sentence is yours.