Book Description:
Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: There slept a silent palace in the sun, With plains adjacent and Thessalian peace Pherai, where King Admetos ruled the land. Out from the portico there gleamed a god, Apollon : for the bow was in his hand, The quiver at his shoulder, all his shape One dreadful beauty. And he hailed the house, As if he knew it well and loved it much: ' O Admeteian domes ! where I endured, Even the god I am, to drudge a while, Accepting the slave's table thankfully, Do righteous penance for a reckless deed !' Then told how Zeus had been the cause of all, Raising the wrath in him which took revenge, And slew those forgers of the thunderbolt Wherewith Zeus blazed the life from out the breast Of Phoibos' son Asklepios (I surmise, Because he brought the dead to life again), And so, for punishment, must needs go slave, God as he was, with a mere mortal lord: Told how he came to King Admetos' land, And played the ministrant, was herdsman there, Warding from him and his all harm away Till now ; ' For, holy as I am,' said he, ' The lord I chanced upon was holy too : Whence I deceived the Moirai, drew from death My master, this same son of Pheres, ay, The goddesses conceded him escape From Hades, when the fated day should fall, Could he exchange lives, find some friendly one Ready, for his sake, to content the grave. But trying all in turn, the friendly list, Why, he found no one, none who loved so much, Nor father, nor the aged mother's self That bore him, no, not any save his wife, Willing to die instead of him, and watch Never a sunrise nor a sunset more ; And she is even now within the house, Upborne by pitying hands, the feeble frame Gasping its last of life out; since to day Des...
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