No More Learning

I still fear: what makes your speech so brave?
--Admetus cast that dear wife to the grave
Alone, with none to see?

--I see no bowl of clear spring water.
It ever stands before the dread
Door where a dead man rests.
--No lock of shorn hair! Every daughter
Of woman shears it for the dead.
No sound of bruised breasts!

--Yet 'tis this very day . . . --This very day?
--The Queen should pass and lie beneath the clay.
--It hurts my life, my heart! --All honest hearts
Must sorrow for a brightness that departs,
A good life worn away.

LEADER.
To wander o'er leagues of land,
To search over wastes of sea,
Where the Prophets of Lycia stand,
Or where Ammon's daughters three
Make runes in the rainless sand,
For magic to make her free--
Ah, vain! for the end is here;
Sudden it comes and sheer.
What lamb on the altar-strand
Stricken shall comfort me?

SECOND ELDER.
Only, only one, I know:
Apollo's son was he,
Who healed men long ago.
Were he but on earth to see,
She would rise from the dark below
And the gates of eternity.
For men whom the Gods had slain
He pitied and raised again;
Till God's fire laid him low,
And now, what help have we?

OTHERS.
All's done that can be. Every vow
Full paid; and every altar's brow
Full crowned with spice of sacrifice.
No help remains nor respite now.

_Enter from the Castle a_ HANDMAID, _almost in tears. _

LEADER.
But see, a handmaid cometh, and the tear
Wet on her cheek! What tiding shall we hear? .