O child, that guided of thine only will
Didst set thy maiden foot against the gate
To strike it open ere thine hour of fate,
Antigone, men say not thou didst ill,
For love’s sake and the reverence of his awe
Divinely dying, slain by mortal law;
For love is awful as immortal death.
And through thee surely hath thy brother won
Rest, out of sight of our world-weary sun,
And in the dead land where ye ghosts draw breath
A royal place and honour; so wast thou
Happy, though earth have hold of thee too now.
So hast thou life and name inviolable
And joy it may be, sacred and severe,
Joy secret-souled beyond all hope or fear,
A monumental joy wherein to dwell
Secluse and silent, a selected state,
Serene possession of thy proper fate.
Thou art not dead as these are dead who live
Full of blind years, a sorrow-shaken kind,
Nor as these are am I the prophet blind;
They have not life that have not heart to give
Life, nor have eyesight who lack heart to see
When to be not is better than to be.
O ye whom time but bears with for a span,
How long will ye be blind and dead, how long
Make your own souls part of your own soul’s wrong?
Son of the word of the most high gods, man,
Why wilt thou make thine hour of light and breath
Emptier of all but shame than very death?
Fool, wilt thou live for ever? though thou care
With all thine heart for life to keep it fast,
Shall not thine hand forego it at the last?
Lo, thy sure hour shall take thee by the hair
Sleeping, or when thou knowest not, or wouldst fly;
And as men died much mightier shalt thou die.
Yea, they are dead, men much more worth than thou;
The savour of heroic lives that were,
Is it not mixed into thy common air?
The sense of them is shed about thee now:
Feel not thy brows a wind blowing from far?
Aches not thy forehead with a future star?
The light that thou may’st make out of thy name
Is in the wind of this same hour that drives,
Blown within reach but once of all men’s lives;
And he that puts forth hand upon the flame
Shall have it for a garland on his head
To sign him for a king among the dead.
But these men that the lessening years behold,
Who sit the most part without flame or crown,
And brawl and sleep and wear their life-days down
With joys and griefs ignobler than of old,
And care not if the better day shall be—
Are these or art thou dead, Antigone?
PART II