ANTIGONE.
The proclamation went not forth from Zeus,
Or Justice, partner of the gods below,
Who had ordained these canons for mankind;
Nor deemed I proclamations had such power
That thereby mortal man could contravene
Heaven's law unwritten and unchangeable.
That law was not the child of yesterday,
Nor knoweth man the source from which it came.
I was not minded for what men might say
To break that law and brave the wrath divine.
That death would come I know, as come it must
Without thy proclamation, and to die
Before my hour I count it so much gain.
For when a life is full of wretchedness
As mine has been, is it not gain to die?
Little I care if I such doom must meet;
But I care much not uninterred to leave
His corpse that was of the same mother born.
One pains me sore, the other pains me not;
And if to thee I seem to play the fool
To me it seems that to a fool I play it.
CHORUS.
She shows the savage spirit of her sire,
And to misfortune is untaught to bend.
CREON.
Know that the most self-willed most often fall.
Iron that hath been tempered by the fire
To a surpassing hardness, when it breaks,
We often see shattered most thoroughly;
And a small bit suffices to subdue
The fiery steed. High thoughts beseem not those
Who owe subjection to another's will.
This maid before displayed her insolence
In overstepping what the laws ordained;
And now again displays it, glorying
And laughing in our face over her crime.
It is not I that am the man, but she
If she can thus usurp and go unscathed.
Be she my sister's child or child of one
Nearer in blood than all around our hearth,
She shall not the last penalty escape,
Nor shall her sister. For she, too, I hold,
Conspired to bring about this burial.
Summon her hither. Just now in the house
I saw her raving like a maid possessed.
When wickedness is gendered in the dark
The heart is apt its secret to betray.
But not less hateful is the shamelessness
Which, of foul acts convicted, calls them fair.