Page:The Plays of Euripides Vol. 1- Edward P. Coleridge (1910).djvu/156

128. Lost indeed am I, if thou, dear wife, wilt really leave me.

. Thou mayst speak of me as naught, as one whose life is o'er.

. Lift up thy face, leave not thy children.

. 'Tis not my own free will; O my babes, farewell!

. Look, look on them but once.

. My end is come.

. What mean'st thou? art leaving us?

. Farewell!

. Lost! lost! woe is me!

. She is gone, the wife of Admetus is no more.

. O my hard fate! My mother has passed to the realms below; she lives no more, dear father, 'neath the sun. Alas for her! she leaves us ere her time and to me bequeaths an orphan's life. Behold that staring eye, those nerveless hands! Hear me, mother, hear me, I implore! 'tis I who call thee now, I thy tender chick, printing my kisses on thy lips.

. She cannot hear, she cannot see; a heavy blow hath fortune dealt us, you children and me.

. O father, I am but a child to have my loving mother leave me here alone; O cruel my fate, alas! and thine, my sister, sharer in my cup of woe. Woe to thee, father! in vain, in vain didst thou take a wife and hast not reached the goal of eld with her; for she is gone before, and now that thou art dead, my mother, our house is all undone.

. Admetus, these misfortunes thou must bear. Thou art by no means the first nor yet shalt be the last of men to lose a wife of worth; know this, we all of us are debtors unto death.

. I understand; this is no sudden flight of ill hither; I was ware of it and long have pined. But since I am to carry the dead forth to her burial, stay here with me and to that inexorable god in Hades raise your antiphone. While