_Son._ O my unhappy fate! {405} My mother sinks to the dark realms of night, Nor longer views this golden light; But to the ills of life exposed Leaves my poor orphan state! Her eyes, my father, see, her eyes are closed, And her hand nerveless falls. Yet hear me, O my mother, hear my cries! It is thy son who calls, Who prostrate on the earth breathes on thy lips his sighs. _Adm._ On one that hears not, sees not! I and you Must bend beneath affliction's heaviest load. _Antistrophe_ _Son._ Ah! she hath left my youth-- {417} My mother, my loved mother is no more-- Left me my sufferings to deplore, Left me a heritage of woe: Who shall my sorrows soothe? Thou too, my sister, thy full share shalt know Of grief, thy heart to rend. Vain, O my father, vain thy nuptial vows, Brought to this speedy end: For when my mother died in ruin sank our house! {425} The Chorus [_in calm blank verse_] call on their king to command himself and bear what many have had to bear before.--_Admetus_ knows he must: this calamity has not come without notice. He rouses himself to give orders as to the preparations for burial: the mourning rites shall last a whole year, and shall extend throughout the whole region of Thessaly: the very horses shall have their waving manes cut close, and no sound of flute or instrument of joy shall be heard in the city. {445} _The corpse is slowly carried out, and at last the Stage is vacant. Then the Chorus address themselves to a Choral Ode in memory of the Spirit now passed beneath the earth: the evolutions as usual, carrying them with each Strophe to one end of the Orchestra, and with the Antistrophe back to the Altar._ CHORAL INTERLUDE II _Strophe_ I Immortal bliss be thine, {446} Daughter of Pelias, in the realms below, Immortal pleasures round thee flow, Though never there the sun's bright beams shall shine. Be the black-brow'd Pluto told, And the Stygian boatman old, Whose rude hands grasp the oar, the rudder guide, The dead conveying o'er the tide,-- Let him be told, so rich a freight before His light skiff never bore; Tell him that o'er the joyless lakes The noblest of her sex her dreary passage takes. _Antistrophe I_