ANTIGONE (continued 1)
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Sophocles and Storr, Francis
CREON. Is not this maid an arrant law-breaker?
HAEMON. The Theban commons with one voice say, No.
CREON. What, shall the mob dictate my policy?
HAEMON. ’Tis thou, methinks, who speakest like a boy.
CREON. Am I to rule for others, or myself?
HAEMON. A State for one man is no State at all.
CREON. The State is his who rules it, so ’tis held.
HAEMON. As monarch of a desert thou wouldst shine.
CREON. This boy, methinks, maintains the woman’s cause.
HAEMON. If thou be’st woman, yes. My thought’s for thee.
CREON. O reprobate, would’st wrangle with thy sire?
HAEMON. Because I see thee wrongfully perverse.
CREON. And am I wrong, if I maintain my rights?
HAEMON. Talk not of rights; thou spurn’st the due of Heaven
CREON. O heart corrupt, a woman’s minion thou!
HAEMON. Slave to dishonor thou wilt never find me.
CREON. Thy speech at least was all a plea for her.
HAEMON. And thee and me, and for the gods below.
CREON. Living the maid shall never be thy bride.
HAEMON. So she shall die, but one will die with her.
CREON. Hast come to such a pass as threaten me?
HAEMON. What threat is this, vain counsels to reprove?
CREON. Vain fool to instruct thy betters; thou shall rue it.
HAEMON. Wert not my father, I had said thou err’st.
CREON. Play not the spaniel, thou a woman’s slave.
HAEMON. When thou dost speak, must no man make reply?
CREON. This passes bounds. By heaven, thou shalt not rate And jeer and flout me with impunity. Off with the hateful thing that she may die At once, beside her bridegroom, in his sight.
HAEMON. Think not that in my sight the maid shall die, Or by my side; never shalt thou again Behold my face hereafter. Go, consort With friends who like a madman for their mate. [Exit HAEMON]
CHORUS. Thy son has gone, my liege, in angry haste. Fell is the wrath of youth beneath a smart.
CREON. Let him go vent his fury like a fiend: These sisters twain he shall not save from death.
CHORUS. Surely, thou meanest not to slay them both?
CREON. I stand corrected; only her who touched The body.
CHORUS. And what death is she to die?
CREON. She shall be taken to some desert place By man untrod, and in a rock-hewn cave, With food no more than to avoid the taint That homicide might bring on all the State, Buried alive. There let her call in aid The King of Death, the one god she reveres, Or learn too late a lesson learnt at last: ’Tis labor lost, to reverence the dead.
CHORUS. (Str.) Love resistless in fight, all yield at a glance of thine eye, Love who pillowed all night on a maiden’s cheek dost lie, Over the upland holds. Shall mortals not yield to thee? (Ant). Mad are thy subjects all, and even the wisest heart Straight to folly will fall, at a touch of thy poisoned dart. Thou didst kindle the strife, this feud of kinsman with kin, By the eyes of a winsome wife, and the yearning her heart to win. For as her consort still, enthroned with Justice above, Thou bendest man to thy will, O all invincible Love. Lo I myself am borne aside, From Justice, as I view this bride. (O sight an eye in tears to drown) Antigone, so young, so fair, Thus hurried down Death’s bower with the dead to share.
ANTIGONE. (Str. 1) Friends, countrymen, my last farewell I make; My journey’s done. One last fond, lingering, longing look I take At the bright sun. For Death who puts to sleep both young and old Hales my young life, And beckons me to Acheron’s dark fold, An unwed wife. No youths have sung the marriage song for me, My bridal bed No maids have strewn with flowers from the lea, ’Tis Death I wed.
CHORUS. But bethink thee, thou art sped, Great and glorious, to the dead. Thou the sword’s edge hast not tasted, No disease thy frame hath wasted. Freely thou alone shalt go Living to the dead below.
ANTIGONE. (Ant. 1) Nay, but the piteous tale I’ve heard men tell Of Tantalus’ doomed child, Chained upon Siphylus’ high rocky fell, That clung like ivy wild, Drenched by the pelting rain and whirling snow, Left there to pine, While on her frozen breast the tears aye flow— Her fate is mine.
CHORUS. She was sprung of gods, divine, Mortals we of mortal line. Like renown with gods to gain Recompenses all thy pain. Take this solace to thy tomb Hers in life and death thy doom.
ANTIGONE. (Str. 2) Alack, alack! Ye mock me. Is it meet Thus to insult me living, to my face? Cease, by our country’s altars I entreat, Ye lordly rulers of a lordly race. O fount of Dirce, wood-embowered plain Where Theban chariots to victory speed, Mark ye the cruel laws that now have wrought my bane, The friends who show no pity in my need! Was ever fate like mine? O monstrous doom, Within a rock-built prison sepulchered, To fade and wither in a living tomb, And alien midst the living and the dead.