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[First published 1849. Reprinted 1855.]
THE CHORUS WELL hath he done who hath seiz’d happiness. | |
| For little do the all-containing Hours, | |
| Though opulent, freely give. | |
| Who, weighing that life well | |
| Fortune presents unpray’d, | 5 |
| Declines her ministry, and carves his own: | |
| And, justice not infring’d, | |
| Makes his own welfare his unswerv’d-from law. | |
| He does well too, who keeps that clue the mild | |
| Birth-Goddess and the austere Fates first gave. | 10 |
| 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, | 15 |
| Till the Fates come again, alone, with death. | |
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| 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 | 20 |
| Our order heaven-ordain’d | |
| Must every day endure. | |
| Voyages, exiles, hates, dissensions, wars. | |
| Besides what waste He makes, | |
| The all-hated, order-breaking, | 25 |
| Without friend, city, or home, | |
| Death, who dissevers all. | |
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| Him then I praise, who dares | |
| To self-selected good | |
| Prefer obedience to the primal law, | 30 |
| 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 loos’d | |
| With strangers: but the bond | 35 |
| Original, deep-inwound, | |
| Of blood, can he not bind: | |
| Nor, if Fate binds, not bear. | |
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| But hush! Haemon, whom Antigone, | |
| Robbing herself of life in burying, | 40 |
| Against Creon’s law, Polynices, | |
| Robs of a lov’d bride; pale, imploring, | |
| Waiting her passage, | |
| Forth from the palace hitherward comes. | |
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HAEMON No, no, old men, Creon I curse not. | 45 |
| 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, | 50 |
| Ah me!—honourest more than thy lover, | |
| O Antigone, | |
| A dead, ignorant, thankless corpse. | |
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THE CHORUS Nor was the love untrue | |
| Which the Dawn-Goddess 1 bore | 55 |
| 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, | 60 |
| From the pine-dotted spurs | |
| Of Parnes, where thy waves, | |
| Asopus, gleam rock-hemm’d; | |
| The Hunter of the Tanagraean Field. | |
| But him, in his sweet prime, | 65 |
| 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. | 70 |
| For she desir’d to make | |
| Immortal mortal man, | |
| And blend his happy life, | |
| Far from the Gods, with hers: | |
| To him postponing an eternal law. | 75 |
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HAEMON But, like me, she, wroth, complaining, | |
| Succumb’d to the envy of unkind Gods: | |
| And, her beautiful arms unclasping, | |
| Her fair Youth unwillingly gave. | |
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THE CHORUS Nor, though enthron’d too high | 80 |
| To fear assault of envious Gods, | |
| His belov’d Argive Seer would Zeus retain | |
| From his appointed end | |
| In this our Thebes: but when | |
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| His flying steeds came near | 85 |
| To cross the steep Ismenian glen, | |
| The broad Earth open’d and whelm’d them and him; | |
| And through the void air sang | |
| At large his enemy’s spear. | |
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| And fain would Zeus have sav’d his tired son | 90 |
| Beholding him where the Two Pillars stand | |
| O’er the sun-redden’d Western Straits: | |
| Or at his work in that dim lower world. | |
| Fain would he have recall’d | |
| The fraudulent oath which bound | 95 |
| To a much feebler wight the heroic man: | |
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| But he preferr’d Fate to his strong desire. | |
| Nor did there need less than the burning pile | |
| Under the towering Trachis crags, | |
| And the Spercheius’ vale, shaken with groans, | 100 |
| And the rous’d Maliac gulph, | |
| And scar’d Oetaean snows, | |
| To achieve his son’s deliverance, O my child. | |
