I will seek some other friendly hearth.AdmetusNever, O prince! Heaven forefend such dire disgrace!HeraclesA guest is a burden to sorrowing friends, if come he should.AdmetusThe dead are dead. Come in.HeraclesTo feast in a friend’s house of sorrow is shameful.AdmetusThe guest chambers lie apart, whereto we will conduct thee.HeraclesLet me go; ten thousandfold shall be my thanks to thee.AdmetusThou must not go to any other hearth. (To a Servant.) Go before, open the guest-rooms that face not these chambers, and bid my stewards see there is plenty of food; then shut the doors that lead into the courtyard; for ’tis not seemly that guests when at their meat should hear the voice of weeping or be made sad. [Exit HERACLES. ChorusWhat doest thou? With such calamity before thee, hast thou the heart, Admetus, to welcome visitors? What means this folly?AdmetusWell, and if I had driven him from my house and city when he came to be my guest, wouldst thou have praised me more? No indeed! for my calamity would have been no whit less, while I should have been more churlish. And this would have been another woe to add to mine, that my house should be called no friend to guests. Yea, and I find him myself the best of hosts whene’er to Argos’ thirsty land I come.ChorusWhy then didst thou conceal thy present misfortune, if, as thy own lips declare, it was a friend that came?AdmetusHe would never have entered my house, had he known aught of my distress. Maybe there are who think me but a fool for acting thus, and these will blame me; but my halls have never learnt to drive away or treat with scorn my guests.

ChorusO home of hospitality, thrown open by thy lord to all now and ever! In thee it was that Pythian Apollo, the sweet harper, deigned to make his home, and in thy halls was content to lead a shepherd’s life, piping o’er the sloping downs shepherd’s madrigals to thy flocks.

ChorusAnd spotted lynxes couched amid his sheep in joy to hear his melody, and the lions’ tawny troop left the glen of Othrys and came; came too the dappled fawn on nimble foot from beyond the crested pines and frisked about thy lyre, O Phoebus, for very joy at thy gladsome minstrelsy.

ChorusAnd so it is thy lord inhabits a home rich in countless flocks by Boebe’s lovely mere, bounding his tilled corn-land and his level pastures with the clime of the Molossi near the sun’s dark stable,and holding sway as far as the harbourless strand of the Aegean ’neath Pelion’s shadow.

ChorusNow too hath he opened wide his house and welcomed a guest although his eye is wet with tears in mourning for his wife so dear but lately dead within his halls; yea, for noble birth to noble feeling is inclined.In Nauck’s text the word ἄγαμαι is here inserted, but it is omitted by Paley. And in the good completest wisdom dwells; and at my heart sits the bold belief that heaven’s servant will be blesedblessed.

AdmetusMen of Pherae, kindly gathered here, lo! even now my servants are bearing the corpse with all its trappings shoulder-high to the funeral pyre for burial; do ye, as custom bids, salute the dead on her last journey starting.