HÆMON.
No, no, old men, Creon I curse not!
I weep, Thebans,
One than Creon crueller far!
For he, he, at least, by slaying her,
August laws doth mightily vindicate;
But thou, too bold, headstrong, pitiless!—
Ah me!—honorest more than thy lover,
O Antigone!
A dead, ignorant, thankless corpse.
THE CHORUS.
Nor was the love untrue
Which the Dawn-Goddess bore
To that fair youth she erst,
Leaving the salt sea-beds,
And coming flushed over the stormy frith
Of loud Euripus, saw,—
Saw and snatched, wild with love,
From the pine-dotted spurs
Of Parnes, where thy waves,
Asopus! gleam rock-hemmed,—
The Hunter of the Tanagræan Field.[13]
But him, in his sweet prime,
By severance immature,
By Artemis’ soft shafts,
She, though a goddess born,
Saw in the rocky isle of Delos die.
Such end o’ertook that love.
For she desired to make
Immortal mortal man,
And blend his happy life,
Far from the gods, with hers;
To him postponing an eternal law.
HÆMON.
But like me, she, wroth, complaining,
Succumbed to the envy of unkind gods;
And, her beautiful arms unclasping,
Her fair youth unwillingly gave.
THE CHORUS.
Nor, though enthroned too high
To fear assault of envious gods,
His beloved Argive seer would Zeus retain
From his appointed end
In this our Thebes; but when
His flying steeds came near
To cross the steep Ismenian glen,
The broad earth opened, and whelmed them and him,
And through the void air sang
At large his enemy’s spear.