she so still? No sound, no word!

HERACLES.
She hath dwelt with Death. Her voice may not be heard
Ere to the Lords of Them Below she pay
Due cleansing, and awake on the third day.
(_To the Attendants_) So; guide her home.

[_They lead_ ALCESTIS _to the doorway_.]

And thou, King, for the rest
Of time, be true; be righteous to thy guest,
As he would have thee be. But now farewell!
My task yet lies before me, and the spell
That binds me to my master; forth I fare.

ADMETUS.
Stay with us this one day! Stay but to share
The feast upon our hearth!

HERACLES.
The feasting day
Shall surely come; now I must needs away.

[HERACLES _departs_.]

ADMETUS.
Farewell! All victory attend thy name
And safe home-coming!
Lo, I make proclaim
To the Four Nations and all Thessaly;
A wondrous happiness hath come to be:
Therefore pray, dance, give offerings and make full
Your altars with the life-blood of the Bull!
For me ... my heart is changed; my life shall mend
Henceforth. For surely Fortune is a friend.

[_He goes with_ ALCESTIS _into the house_.]

CHORUS.
There be many shapes of mystery;
And many things God brings to be,
Past hope or fear.
And the end men looked for cometh not,
And a path is there where no man thought.
So hath it fallen here.

NOTES

P. 3, Prologue. Asclepios (Latin Aesculapius), son of Apollo, the
hero-physician, by his miraculous skill healed the dead. This transgressed
the divine law, so Zeus slew him. (The particular dead man raised by him
was Hippolytus, who came to life in Italy under the name of Virbius, and
was worshipped with Artemis at Aricia.) Apollo in revenge, not presuming
to attack Zeus himself, killed the Cyclopes, and was punished by being
exiled from heaven and made servant to a mortal. There are several such
stories of gods made servants to human beings.

P. 3, l. 12, Beguiling.]--See Preface. In the original story he made them
drunk with wine. (Aesch. _Eumenides_, 728.) As the allusion would
doubtless be clear to the Greek audience, I have added a mention of wine
which is not in the Greek. Libations to the Elder Gods, such as the Fates
and Eumenides, had to be "wineless." Historically this probably means that
the worship dates from a time before wine was used in Greece.

P. 4, l. 22, The stain of death must not come nigh My radiance.]--Compare
Artemis in the last scene of the _