His age was ripe at least.”
”My father lives,
And she who bore me lives too, Herakles.”
“It cannot be thy wife Alkestis gone?”
“Two-fold the tale is, I can tell of her.”
“Dead dost thou speak of her, or living yet?”
“She is — and is not: hence the pain to me!”
“I learn no whit the more, so dark thy speech!”
“Know’st thou not on what fate she needs must fall?” 1160
“I know she is resigned to die for thee.”
“How lives she still, then, if submitting so?”
“Eh, weep her not beforehand! wait till then!”
“Who is to die is dead; doing is done.”
“To be and not to be are thought diverse.”
“Thou judgest this — I, that way, Herakles!”
“Well, but declare what causes thy complaint!
Who is the man has died from out thy friends?”
“No man: I had a woman in my mind.”
“Alien, or someone born akin to thee?” 1170
“Alien: but still related to my house.”
“How did it happen then that here she died?”
“Her father dying left his orphan here.”
“Alas, Admetos — would we found thee gay,
Not grieving!”
”What as if about to do
Subjoinest thou that comment?”
”I shall seek
Another hearth, proceed to other hosts.”
“Never, O king, shall that be! No such ill
Betide me!”
”Nay, to mourners, should there come
A guest, he proves importunate!”
”The dead — 1180
Dead are they: but go thou within my house!”
“‘T is base carousing beside friends who mourn.”
“The guest-rooms, whither we shall lead thee, lie
Apart from ours.”
”Nay, let me go my way!
Ten thousandfold the favor I shall thank!”
“It may not be thou goest to the hearth
Of any man but me!” so made an end
Admetos, softly and decisively,
Of the altercation. Herakles forbore:
And the king bade a servant lead the way, 1190
Open the guest-rooms ranged remote from view
O’ the main hall, tell the functionaries, too,
They had to furnish forth a plenteous feast:
And then shut close the doors o’ the hall, midway,
“Because it is not proper friends who feast
Should hear a groaning or be grieved,” quoth he.
Whereat the hero, who was truth itself,
Let out the smile again, repressed awhile
Like fountain-brilliance one forbids to play.
He did too many grandnesses, to note 1200
Much in the meaner things about his path:
And stepping there, with face towards the sun,
Stopped seldom to pluck weeds or ask their names.
Therefore he took Admetos at the word:
This trouble must not hinder any more
A true heart from good will and pleasant ways.
And so, the great arm, which had slain the snake,
Strained his friend’s head a moment in embrace
On that broad breast beneath the lion’s-hide,
Till the king’s cheek winced at the thick rough gold; 1210
And then strode off, with who had care of him,
To the remote guest-chamber: glad to give
Poor flesh and blood their respite and relief
In the interval ‘twixt fight and fight again —
All for the world’s sake. Our eyes followed him,
Be sure, till those mid-doors shut us outside.
The king, too, watched great Herakles go off
All faith, love, and obedience to a friend.
And when they questioned him, the simple ones,
“What dost thou? Such calamity to face, 1220
Lies full before thee — and thou art so bold
As play the host, Admetos? Hast thy wits?”
He replied calmly to each chiding tongue:
“But if from house and home I forced away
A coming guest, would’st thou have praised me more?
No, truly! since calamity were mine,
Nowise diminished; while I showed myself
Unhappy and inhospitable too:
So adding to my ills this other ill,
That mine were styled a stranger-hating house. 1230
Myself have ever found this man the best
Of entertainers when 1 went his way
To parched and thirsty Argos.”
”If so be —
Why didst thou hide what destiny was here,
When one came that was kindly, as thou say’st?”
“He never would have willed to cross my door
Had he known aught of my calamities.
And probably to some of you I seem
Unwise enough in doing what I do;
Such will scarce praise me: but these halls of mine 1240
Know not to drive off and dishonour guests.”
And so, the duty done, he turned once more
To go and busy him about his dead.
As for the sympathizers left to muse,
There was a change, a new light thrown on things,
Contagion from the magnanimity
O’ the man whose life lay on his hand so light,
As up he stepped, pursuing duty still
“Higher and harder,” as he laughed and said.
Somehow they found no folly now in the act 1250
They blamed erewhile: Admetos’ private grief
Shrank to a somewhat pettier obstacle
I’ the way o’ the world: they saw good days had been,
And good days, peradventure, still might be;
Now that they over-looked the present cloud
Heavy upon the palace opposite.
And soon the thought took words and music thus: —
“Harbour of many a stranger, free to friend,
Ever and always, O thou house o’ the man
We mourn for! Thee, Apollon’s very self, 1260
The lyric Puthian, deigned inhabit once,
Become a shepherd here in thy domains,
And pipe, adown the winding hill-side paths,
Pastoral marriage-poems to thy flocks
At feed: while with them fed in fellowship,
Through joy i’ the music, spot-skin lynxes; ay,
And lions too, the bloody company,
Came, leaving Othrus’ dell; and round thy lyre,
Phoibos, there danced the speckle-coated fawn,
Pacing on lightsome fetlock past the pines 1270
Tress-topped, the creature’s natural boundary,
Into the open everywhere; such heart
Had she within her, beating joyous beats,
At the sweet reassurance of thy song!
Therefore the lot o’ the master is, to live
In a home multitudinous with herds,
Along by the fair-flowing Boibian lake,
Limited, that ploughed land and pasture-plain,
Only where stand the sun’s steeds, stabled west
I’ the cloud, by that mid-air which makes the clime 1280
Of those Molossoi: and he rules as well
O’er the Aigaian, up to Pelion’s shore, —
Sea-stretch without a port! Such lord have we:
And here he opens house now, as of old,
Takes to the heart of it a guest again:
Though moist the eyelid of the master, still
Mourning his dear wife’s body, dead but now!”
And they admired: nobility of soul
Was self-impelled to reverence, they saw:
The best men ever prove the wisest too: 1290
Something instinctive guides them still aright.
And on each soul this boldness settled now,
That one, who reverenced the Gods so much
Would prosper yet: (or — I could wish it ran —
Who venerates the Gods i’ the main, will still
Practise things honest though obscure to judge.)
They ended, for Admetos entered now;
Having disposed all duteously indoors,
He came into the outside world again,
Quiet as ever: but a quietude 1300
Bent on pursuing its descent to truth,
As who must grope until he gain the ground
O’ the dungeon doomed to be his dwelling now.
Already high o’er head was piled the dusk,
When something pushed to stay his downward step,
Pluck back despair just reaching its repose.
He would have bidden the kind presence there
Observe that, — since the corpse was coming out,
Cared for in all things that befit the case,
Carried aloft, in decency and state, 1310
To the last burial place and burning pile, —
‘T were proper friends addressed, as custom prompts,
Alkestis bound on her last journeying.
“Ay, for we see thy father,” they subjoined,
“Advancing as the aged foot best may;
His servants, too: each bringing in his hand
Adornments for thy wife, all pomp that’s due
To the downward-dwelling people.” And in truth,
By slow procession till they filled the stage,
Came Pheres, and his following, and their gifts. 1320
You see, the worst of the interruption was,
It plucked back, with an over-hasty hand,
Admetos from descending to the truth,
(I told you) — put him on the brink again,
Full i’ the noise and glare where late he stood:
With no fate fallen and irrevocable,
But all things subject still to chance and change:
And that chance, — life, and that change, — happiness.
And with the low strife came the little mind:
He was once more the man might gain so much, 1330
Life too and wife too, would his friends but help!
All he felt now was, that there faced him one
Supposed the likeliest, in emergency.
To help: and help, by mere self-sacrifice
So natural, it seemed as if the sire
Must needs lie open still to argument,
Withdraw the rash decision, not to die
But rather live, though death would save his son: —
Argument like the ignominious grasp
O’ the drowner whom his fellow grasps as fierce, 1340
Each marvelling that the other needs must hold
Head out of water, though friend choke thereby.
And first the father’s salutation fell.
Burthened, he came, in common with his child,
Who lost, none would gainsay, a good chaste spouse:
Yet such things must be borne, though hard to bear.
“So, take this tribute of adornment, deep
In the earth let it descend along with her!
Behoves we treat the body with respect
— Of one who died, at least, to save thy life, 1350
Kept me from being childless, nor allowed
That I, bereft of thee, should peak and pine
In melancholy age; she, for the sex,
All of her sisters, put in evidence,
By daring such a feat, that female life
Might prove more excellent than men suppose.
O thou Alkestis!” out he burst in fine,
“Who, while thou savedst this my son, didst raise
Also myself from sinking, — hail to thee!
Well be it with thee even in the house 1360
Of Hades! I maintain, if mortals must
Marry, this sort of marriage is the sole
Permitted those among them who are wise!”
So his oration ended. Like hates like:
Accordingly Admetos, — full i’ the face
Of Pheres, his true father, outward shape
And inward fashion, body matching soul, —
Saw just himself when years should do their work
And reinforce the selfishness inside
Until it pushed the last disguise away: 1370
As when the liquid metal cools i’ the mould,
Stands forth a statue: bloodless, hard, cold bronze.
So, in old Pheres, young Admetos showed,
Pushed to completion: and a shudder ran,
And his repugnance soon had vent in speech:
Glad to escape outside, nor, pent within,
Find itself there fit food for exercise.
“Neither to this interment called by me
Comest thou, nor thy presence I account
Among the covetable proofs of love. 1380
As for thy tribute of adornment, — no!
Ne’er shall she don it, ne’er in debt to thee
Be buried! What is thine, that keep thou still!
Then it behoved thee to commiserate
When I was perishing: but thou, who stood’st
Foot-free o’ the snare, wast acquiescent then
That I, the young, should die, not thou, the old —
Wilt thou lament this corpse thyself hast slain?
Thou wast not, then, true father to this flesh;
Nor she, who makes profession of my birth 1390
And styles herself my mother, neither she
Bore me: but, come of slave’s blood, I was cast
Stealthily ‘neath the bosom of thy wife!
Thou showedst, put to touch, the thing thou art,
Nor I esteem myself born child of thee!
Otherwise, thine is the preeminence
O’er all the world in cowardice of soul:
Who, being the old man thou art, arrived
Where life should end, didst neither will nor dare
Die for thy son, but left the task to her, 1400
The alien woman, whom I well might think
Own, only mother both and father too!
And yet a fair strife had been thine to strive,
— Dying for thy own child; and brief for thee
In any case, the rest of time to live;
While I had lived, and she, our rest of time,
Nor I been left to groan in solitude.
Yet certainly all things which happy man
Ought to experience, thy experience grasped.
Thou wast a ruler through the bloom of youth, 1410
And I was son to thee, recipient due
Of sceptre and demesne, — no need to fear
That dying thou should’st leave an orphan house
For strangers to despoil. Nor yet wilt thou
Allege that as dishonouring, forsooth,
Thy length of days, I gave thee up to die, —
I, who have held thee in such reverence!
And in exchange for it, such gratitude
Thou, father, — thou award’st me, mother mine!
Go, lose no time, then, in begetting sons 1420
Shall cherish thee in age, and, when thou diest,
Deck up and lay thee out, as corpses claim!
For never I, at least, with this my hand
Will bury thee: it is myself am dead
So far as lies in thee. But if I light
Upon another saviour, and still see
The sunbeam, — his, the child I call myself,
His, the old age that claims my cherishing.
How vainly do these aged pray for death,
Abuse the slow drag of senility! 1430
But should death step up, nobody inclines
To die, nor age is now the weight it was!”
Tried at, — how weakness strove to hide itself
In bluster against weakness, — the loud word
To hide the little whisper, not so low
Already in that heart beneath those lips!
Ha, could it be, who hated cowardice
Stood confessed craven, and who lauded so
Self-immolating love, himself had pushed 1440
The loved one to the altar in his place?
Friends interposed, would fain stop further play
O’ the sharp-edged tongue: they felt love’s champion here
Had left an undefended point or two.
The antagonist might profit by; bade “Pause!
Enough the present sorrow! Nor, O son,
Whet thus against thyself thy father’s soul!”
Ay, but old Pheres was the stouter stuff!
Admetos, at the flintiest of the heart,
Had so much soft in him as held a fire: 1450
The other was all iron, clashed from flint
Its fire, but shed no spark and showed no bruise.
Did Pheres crave instruction as to facts?
He came, content, the ignoble word, for him,
Should lurk still in the blackness of each breast,
As sleeps the water-serpent half-surmised:
Not brought up to the surface at a bound,
By one touch of the idly-probing spear,
Reed-like against the unconquerable scale.
He came pacific, rather, as strength should, 1460
Bringing the decent praise, the due regret,
And each banality prescribed of old.
Did he commence “Why let her die for you?”
And rouse the coiled and quiet ugliness
“What is so good to man as man’s own life?”
No: but the other did: and, for his pains,
Out, full in face of him, the venom leapt.
“And whom dost thou make bold, son — Ludian slave,
Or Phrugian whether, money made thy ware.
To drive at with revilings? Know’st thou not 1470
I, a Thessalian, from Thessalian sire
Spring and am born legitimately free?
Too arrogant art thou; and, youngster-words
Casting against me, having had thy fling,
Thou goest not off as all were ended so!
I gave thee birth indeed and mastership
I’ the mansion, brought thee up to boot: there ends
My owing, nor extends to die for thee!
Never did I receive it as a law
Hereditary, no, nor Greek at all, 1480
That sires in place of sons were bound to die.
For to thy sole and single self wast thou
Born, with whatever fortune, good or bad;
Such things as bear bestowment, those thou hast;
Already ruling widely, broad lands, too,
Doubt not but I shall leave thee in due time:
Robert Browning - Delphi Poets Series Page 143
