Part 44

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.