Robert Browning

“ Behoved thee not prove faulty to myself!" ⁠1530
"Had I died for thee I had faulted more!"
"All's one, then, for youth's bloom and age to die?"
"Our duty is to live one life, not two!"
"Go then, and outlive Zeus, for aught I care!"
"What, curse thy parents with no sort of cause?"
"Curse, truly! All thou lovest is long life!"
"And dost not thou, too, all for love of life,
Carry out now, in place of thine, this corpse?" ”

“ 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:
For why? My father left me them before.
Well then, where wrong I thee? — of what defraud?
Neither do thou die for this man, myself,
Nor let him die for thee! — is all I beg. ⁠1490
Thou joyest seeing daylight: dost suppose
Thy father joys not too? ”

“ 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. ”

“ Nothing is new. You have to stay, you friends,
Because the next need is to carry forth
The corpse here: you must stay and do your part,
Chant proper pæan to the God below;
Drink-sacrifice he likes not. I decree
That all Thessalians over whom I rule
Hold grief in common with me; let them shear
Their locks, and be the peplos black they show! ”

“ Comprehend
That, if thou lovest so that life of thine,
Why, everybody loves his own life too:
So, good words, henceforth! If thou speak us ill, ⁠1510
Many and true an ill thing shalt thou hear! ”

“ 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 ”

“ So, the old selfish Pheres went his way, ⁠1590
Case-hardened as he came; and left the youth,
(Only half selfish now, since sensitive)
To go on learning by a light the more,
As friends moved off, renewing dirge the while:
"Unhappy in thy daring! ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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! ”

“ Nor changed nor checked the kindly nature, — no!
So long as men were merely weak, not bad,
He loved men: were they Gods he used to help?
"Yea, Pheres' son is in-doors, Herakles:
But say, what sends thee to Thessalian soil,
Brought by what business to this Pherai town?"
"A certain labour that I have to do
Eurustheus the Tirunthian," laughed the God.
"And whither wendest — on what wandering ⁠1090
Bound now?" (they had an instinct, guessed what meant
Wanderings, labours, in the God's light mouth.) ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Was truth fast terrifying tears away?
"Hail, child of Zeus, and sprung from Perseus too!"
The salutation ran without a fault.
"And thou, Admetos, King of Thessaly!"
"Would, as thou wishest me, the grace might fall!
But my good-wisher, that thou art, I know."
"What's here? these shorn locks, this sad show of thee?"
"I must inter a certain corpse to-day."
"Now, from thy children God avert mischance!" ⁠1150
"They live, my children ”