Well hath he done who hath seized happiness!
For little do the all-containing hours,
Though opulent, freely give.
Who, weighing that life well
Fortune presents unpray'd,
Declines her ministry, and carves his own;
And, justice not infringed,
Makes his own welfare his unswerved-from law.
He does well too, who keeps that clue the mild
Birth-Goddess and the austere Fates first gave.
For from the day when these
Bring him, a weeping child,
First to the light, and mark
A country for him, kinsfolk, and a home,
Unguided he remains,
Till the Fates come again, this time with death.
In little companies,
And, our own place once left,
Ignorant where to stand, or whom to avoid,
By city and household group'd, we live; and many shocks
Our order heaven-ordain'd
Must every day endure:
Voyages, exiles, hates, dissensions, wars.
Besides what waste he makes,
The all-hated, order-breaking,
Without friend, city, or home,
Death, who dissevers all.
Him then I praise, who dares
To self-selected good
Prefer obedience to the primal law,
Which consecrates the ties of blood; for these, indeed,
Are to the Gods a care;
That touches but himself.
For every day man may be link'd and loosed
With strangers; but the bond
Original, deep-inwound,
Of blood, can he not bind,
Nor, if Fate binds, not bear.
But hush! Hæmon, whom Antigone,
Robbing herself of life in burying,
Against Creon's law, Polynices,
Robs of a loved bride—pale, imploring,
Waiting her passage,
Forth from the palace hitherward comes.
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 them, too-bold, headstrong, pitiless!
Ah me!—honourest 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 flush'd over the stormy frith
Of loud Euripus, saw—
Saw and snatch'd, wild with love,
From the pine-dotted spurs
Of Parnes, where thy waves,
Asopus! gleam rock-hemm'd—
The Hunter of the Tanagræan Field.[14]