Sophokles got the prize,

great name! They

"O thou, of greatest Zeus true son,"

spoke

Admetos when the closing word must come, Go ever in a glory of success,

66

And save, that sire, his offspring to the end! For thou hast - only thou- raised me and mine

Up again to this light and life!" Then asked
Tremblingly, how was trod the perilous path
Out of the dark into the light and life:
How it had happened with Alkestis there.

And Herakles said little, but enough-
How he engaged in combat with that king
O' the dæmons: how the field of contest lay
By the tomb's self: how he sprang from am-
buscade,

Captured Death, caught him in that pair of hands.

Herakles solemnly replied, "Not yet
Is it allowable thou hear the things
She has to tell thee; let evanish quite
That consecration to the lower Gods,
And on our upper world the third day rise!
Lead her in, meanwhile; good and true thou
art,

Good, true, remain thou! Practise piety
To stranger-guests the old way! So, farewell!
Since forth I fare, fulfil my urgent task
Set by the king, the son of Sthenelos."

Fain would Admetos keep that splendid smile
Ever to light him. "Stay with us, thou heart!
Remain our house-friend!"

say,

Sophokles also means to make a piece,
Model a new Admetos, a new wife:

Success to him! One thing has many sides.
The great name! But no good supplants a good,
Nor beauty undoes beauty. Sophokles
Will carve and carry a fresh cup, brimful
Of beauty and good, firm to the altar-foot,
And glorify the Dionusiac shrine:

Not clash against this crater in the place
Where the God put it when his mouth had
drained,

To the last dregs, libation lifeblood-like,
And praised Euripides forevermore

The Human with his droppings of warm tears.

Still, since one thing may have so many sides,
I think I see how, far from Sophokles,
You, I, or any one might mould a new
Admetos, new Alkestis. Ah, that brave
Bounty of poets, the one royal race

That ever was, or will be, in this world!
They give no gift that bounds itself and ends
I' the giving and the taking: theirs so breeds
I' the heart and soul o' the taker, so trans-

mutes

The man who only was a man before,
That he grows godlike in his turn, can give —
He also: share the poets' privilege,

Bring forth new good, new beauty, from the old.

As though the cup that gave the wine, gave, too,

The God's prolific giver of the grape,

-

That vine, was wont to find out, fawn around
His footstep, springing still to bless the dearth,
At bidding of a Mainad. So with me:
For I have drunk this poem, quenched my
thirst,
Satisfied heart and soul yet more remains!
Could we too make a poem ? Try at least,
Inside the head, what shape the rose-mists take!
When God Apollon took, for punishment,
A mortal form and sold himself a slave
To King Admetos till a term should end,
Not only did he make, in servitude,
Such music, while he fed the flocks and herds,
As saved the pasturage from wrong or fright,
Curing rough creatures of ungentleness:
Much more did that melodious wisdom work
Within the heart o' the master: there, ran wild
Many a lust and greed that grow to strength
By preying on the native pity and care,
Would else, all undisturbed, possess the land.

Into a wonder and a triumph, so
Began Alkestis: "Nay, thou art to live!
The glory that, in the disguise of flesh,
Was helpful to our house, he prophesied
The coming fate: whereon, I pleaded sore
That he, I guessed a God, who to his couch
Amid the clouds must go and come again,
While we were darkling, since he loved us
both,

He should permit thee, at whatever price,
To live and carry out to heart's content
Soul's purpose, turn each thought to very deed,
Nor let Zeus lose the monarch meant in thee.

"To which Apollon, with a sunset smile,
Sadly And so should mortals arbitrate!
It were unseemly if they aped us Gods,
And, mindful of our chain of consequence,
Lost care of the immediate earthly link:
Forwent the comfort of life's little hour,
In prospect of some cold abysmal blank'
Alien eternity, unlike the time

They know, and understand to practise with, -
No, -our eternity - no heart's blood, bright
And warm outpoured in its behoof, would
tinge

Never so palely, warm a whit the more:
Whereas retained and treasured - left to beat
Joyously on, a life's length, in the breast
O' the loved and loving-it would throb itself
Through, and suffuse the earthly tenement,
Transform it, even as your mansion here
Is love-transformed irto a temple-home
Where I, a God, forget the Olumpian glow,
I' the feel of human richness like the rose:
Your hopes and fears, so blind and yet so sweet
With death about them. Therefore, well in
thee

To look, not on eternity, but time:

To apprehend that, should Admetos die,
All, we Gods purposed in him, dies as sure:
That, life's link snapping, all our chain is lost.
And yet a mortal glance might pierce, me-
thinks,

Deeper into the seeming dark of things,

And learn, no fruit, man's life can bear, will fade:

Learn, if Admetos die now, so much more
Will pity for the frailness found in flesh,
Will terror at the earthly chance and change
Frustrating wisest scheme of noblest soul,
Will these go wake the seeds of good asleep
Throughout the world: as oft a rough wind
sheds

The unripe promise of some field-flower,

true!

If not through me, then through some other man!

Still, in myself he had a purpose too,
Inalienably mine, to end with me:

This purpose that, throughout my earthly life,

Mine should be mingled and made up with thine,

-

Never be that abominable show
Of passive death without a quickening life-
Admetos only, no Alkestis now!"

Then she: "O thou Admetos, must the pile
Of truth on truth, which needs but one truth

more

To tower up in completeness, trophy-like,
Emprise of man, and triumph of the world,
Must it go ever to the ground again
Because of some faint heart or faltering hand,
Which we, that breathless world about the
base,

Trusted should carry safe to altitude,
Superimpose o' the summit, our supreme
Achievement, our victorious coping-stone?
Shall thine, Beloved, prove the hand and heart
That fail again, flinch backward at the truth
Would cap and crown the structure this last
time,

Precipitate our monumental hope

And strew the earth ignobly yet once more? See how, truth piled on truth, the structure wants,

Waits justs the crowning truth I claim of thee!
Wouldst thou, for any joy to be enjoyed,
For any sorrow that thou mightst escape,
Unwill thy will to reign a righteous king?
Nowise! And were there two lots, death and
life,

Life, wherein good resolve should go to air,
Death, whereby finest fancy grew plain fact
I' the reign of thy survivor, life or death?
Certainly death, thou choosest. Here stand I
The wedded, the beloved one: hadst thou
loved

Her who less worthily could estimate

Both life and death than thou? Not so should say

Admetos, whom Apollon made come court
Alkestis in a car, submissive brutes

Of blood were yoked to, symbolizing soul
Must dominate unruly sense in man.
Then, shall Admetos and Alkestis see
Good alike, and alike choose, each for each,
Good, and yet, each for other, at the last,
Choose evil? What? thou soundest in my soul
To depths below the deepest, reachest good
In evil, that makes evil good again,
And so allottest to me that I live
And not die letting die, not thee alone,
But all true life that lived in both of us?
Look at me once ere thou decree the lot!"

Whereat the softened eyes

Of the lost maidenhood that lingered still
Straying among the flowers in Sicily,
Sudden was startled back to Hades' throne
By that demand: broke through humanity
Into the orbed omniscience of a God,
Searched at a glance Alkestis to the soul,
And said while a long slow sigh lost itself
I' the hard and hollow passage of a laugh:
"Hence, thou deceiver! This is not to die,
If, by the very death which mocks me now,
The life, that's left behind and past my power,
Is formidably doubled. Say, there fight
Two athletes, side by side, each athlete armed
With only half the weapons, and no more,
Adequate to a contest with their foe:

If one of these should fling helm, sword and shield

To fellowshieldless, swordless, helmless

late

And so leap naked o'er the barrier, leave
A combatant equipped from head to heel,
Yet cry to the other side, Receive a friend
Who fights no longer!' 'Back, friend, to the
fray!'

Would be the prompt rebuff; I echo it.
Two souls in one were formidable odds:
Admetos must not be himself and thou!"

And so, before the embrace relaxed a whit,
The lost eyes opened, still beneath the look;
And lo, Alkestis was alive again,

And of Admetos' rapture who shall speak?

So, the two lived together long and well.
But never could I learn, by word of scribe
Or voice of poet, rumor wafts our way,
That of the scheme of rule in righteousness,
The bringing back again the Golden Age,
Which, rather than renounce, our pair would

die

That ever one faint particle came true,
With both alive to bring it to effect:
Such is the envy Gods still bear mankind!

So might our version of the story prove,
And no Euripidean pathos plague
Too much my critic-friend of Syracuse.

"Besides your poem failed to get the prize: (That is, the first prize: second prize is none.) Sophokles got it!" Honor the great name! All cannot love two great names; yet some do: I know the poetess who graved in gold, Among her glories that shall never fade, This style and title for Euripides,

The Human with his droppings of warm tears.

I know, too, a great Kaunian painter, strong
As Herakles, though rosy with a robe

Of grace that softens down the sinewy strength:
And he has made a picture of it all.
There lies Alkestis dead, beneath the sun,
She longed to look her last upon, beside
The sea, which somehow tempts the life in us
To come trip over its white waste of waves,
And try escape from earth, and fleet as free.

Behind the body, I suppose there bends
Old Pheres in his hoary impotence;
And women-wailers in a corner crouch

- Four, beautiful as you four-yes, indeed!Close, each to other, agonizing all,

As fastened, in fear's rhythmic sympathy,
To two contending opposite. There strains
The might o' the hero 'gainst his more than
match,

-Death, dreadful not in thew and bone, but like

The envenomed substance that exudes some dew
Whereby the merely honest flesh and blood
Will fester up and run to ruin straight,
Ere they can close with, clasp and overcome

WIND, wave, and bark, bear Euthukles and me,
Balaustion, from not sorrow but despair,
Not memory but the present and its pang!
Athenai, live thou hearted in my heart:
Never, while I live, may I see thee more,
Never again may these repugnant orbs
Ache themselves blind before the hideous

pomp,

The ghastly mirth which mocked thine overthrow

- Death's entry, Haides' outrage!

Doomed to die, -
Fire should have flung a passion of embrace
About thee till, resplendently inarmed,
(Temple by temple folded to his breast,
All thy white wonder fainting out in ash,)
Lightly some vaporous sigh of soul escaped
And so the Immortals bade Athenai back!
Or earth might sunder and absorb thee, save,
Buried below Olumpos and its gods,
Akropolis to dominate her realm

For Koré, and console the ghosts; or, sea,
What if thy watery plural vastitude,
Rolling unanimous advance, had rushed,
Might upon might, a moment, - stood, one
stare,

Sea-face to city-face, thy glaucous wave
Glassing that marbled last magnificence,
Till fate's pale tremulous foam-flower tipped
the gray,

And when wave broke and overswarmed, and, sucked

Of surge secured from horror? Rather say,
Quieted out of weakness into strength.
I dare invite, survey the scene my sense
Staggered to apprehend: for, disenvolved
From the mere outside anguish and contempt,
Slowly a justice centred in a doom
Reveals itself. Ay, pride succumbed to pride,
Oppression met the oppressor and was matched.
Athenai's vaunt braved Sparté's violence
Till, in the shock, prone fell Peiraios, low
Rampart and bulwark lay, as timing stroke
Of hammer, axe, and beam hoist, poised and
swung-

The very flute-girls blew their laughing best,
In dance about the conqueror while he bade
Music and merriment help enginery
Batter down, break to pieces all the trust
Of citizens once, slaves now. See what walls
Play substitute for the long double range
Themistoklean, heralding a guest
From harbor on to citadel! Each side
Their senseless walls demolished stone by stone,
See, outer wall as stonelike, heads and
hearts,

Athenai's terror-stricken populace!

Prattlers, tongue-tied in crouching abjectness,— Braggarts, who wring hands wont to flourish swords

Sophist and rhetorician, demagogue,
(Argument dumb, authority a jest,)
Dikast and heliast, pleader, litigant,
Quack-priest, sham-prophecy-retailer, scout
O' the customs, sycophant, whate'er the style,
Altar-scrap-snatcher, pimp and parasite,
Rivalities at truce now each with each,
Stupefied mud-banks, such an use they serve!
While the one order which performs exact
To promise, functions faithful last as first,
What is it but the city's lyric troop,
Chantress and psaltress, flute-girl, dancing-girl?
Athenai's harlotry takes laughing care
Their patron miss no pipings, late she loved,
But deathward tread at least the kordax-step.

Die then, who pulled such glory on your heads!
There let it grind to powder! Perikles!
The living are the dead now: death be life!
Why should the sunset yonder waste its wealth?
Prove thee Olumpian! If my heart supply
Inviolate the structure, true to type,

Build me some spirit-place no flesh shall find,
As Pheidias may inspire thee; slab on slab,
Renew Athenai, quarry out the cloud,
Convert to gold yon west extravagance!
'Neath Propulaia, from Akropolis

By vapory grade and grade, gold all the way,
Step to thy snow-Pnux, mount thy Bema-cloud,
Thunder and lighten thence a Hellas through
That shall be better and more beautiful
And too august for Sparté's foot to spurn!
Chasmed in the crag, again our Theatre
Predominates, one purple: Staghunt-month,
Brings it not Dionusia? Hail, the Three !
Aischulos, Sophokles, Euripides

Compete, gain prize or lose prize, godlike still.
Nay, lest they lack the old god-exercise-
Their noble want the unworthy, as of old,
(How otherwise should patience crown their
might?)

What if each find his ape promoted man,

His censor raised for antic service still?
Some new Hermippos to pelt Perikles,
Kratinos to swear Pheidias robbed a shrine,
Eruxis- I suspect, Euripides,

No brow will ache because with mop and mow
He gibes my poet! There's a dog-faced dwarf
That gets to godship somehow, yet retains
His apehood in the Egyptian hierarchy,
More decent, indecorous just enough:
Why should not dog-ape, graced in due degree,
Grow Momos as thou Zeus? Or didst thou sigh
Rightly with thy Makaria? After life,
Better no sentiency than turbulence;
Death cures the low contention." Be it so!
Yet progress means contention, to my mind.