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.
CHORUS.
But bethink thee, thou art sped,
Great and glorious, to the dead.
Thou the sword’s edge hast not tasted,
No disease thy frame hath wasted.
Freely thou alone shalt go
Living to the dead below.
ANTIGONE.
(Ant. 1)
Nay, but the piteous tale I’ve heard men tell
Of Tantalus’ doomed child,
Chained upon Siphylus’ high rocky fell,
That clung like ivy wild,
Drenched by the pelting rain and whirling snow,
Left there to pine,
While on her frozen breast the tears aye flow—
Her fate is mine.
CHORUS.
She was sprung of gods, divine,
Mortals we of mortal line.
Like renown with gods to gain
Recompenses all thy pain.
Take this solace to thy tomb
Hers in life and death thy doom.
ANTIGONE.
(Str. 2)
Alack, alack! Ye mock me. Is it meet
Thus to insult me living, to my face?
Cease, by our country’s altars I entreat,
Ye lordly rulers of a lordly race.
O fount of Dirce, wood-embowered plain
Where Theban chariots to victory speed,
Mark ye the cruel laws that now have wrought my bane,
The friends who show no pity in my need!
Was ever fate like mine? O monstrous doom,
Within a rock-built prison sepulchered,
To fade and wither in a living tomb,
And alien midst the living and the dead.
CHORUS.
(Str. 3)
In thy boldness over-rash
Madly thou thy foot didst dash
’Gainst high Justice’ altar stair.
Thou a father’s guild dost bear.
ANTIGONE.
(Ant. 2)
At this thou touchest my most poignant pain,
My ill-starred father’s piteous disgrace,
The taint of blood, the hereditary stain,
That clings to all of Labdacus’ famed race.
Woe worth the monstrous marriage-bed where lay
A mother with the son her womb had borne,
Therein I was conceived, woe worth the day,
Fruit of incestuous sheets, a maid forlorn,
And now I pass, accursed and unwed,
To meet them as an alien there below;
And thee, O brother, in marriage ill-bestead,
’Twas thy dead hand that dealt me this death-blow.
CHORUS.
Religion has her chains, ’tis true,
Let rite be paid when rites are due.
Yet is it ill to disobey
The powers who hold by might the sway.
Thou hast withstood authority,
A self-willed rebel, thou must die.
ANTIGONE.
Unwept, unwed, unfriended, hence I go,
No longer may I see the day’s bright eye;
Not one friend left to share my bitter woe,
And o’er my ashes heave one passing sigh.