Oedipus Trilogy Part 31

CREON What, would you have us at our age be schooled, Lessoned in prudence by a beardless boy?

HAEMON I plead for justice, father, nothing more.

Weigh me upon my merit, not my years.

CREON Strange merit this to sanction lawlessness!

HAEMON For evil-doers I would urge no plea.

CREON Is not this maid an arrant law-breaker?

HAEMON The Theban commons with one voice say, No.

CREON What, shall the mob dictate my policy?

HAEMON 'Tis thou, methinks, who speakest like a boy.

CREON Am I to rule for others, or myself?

HAEMON A State for one man is no State at all.

CREON The State is his who rules it, so 'tis held.

HAEMON As monarch of a desert thou wouldst s.h.i.+ne.

CREON This boy, methinks, maintains the woman's cause.

HAEMON If thou be'st woman, yes. My thought's for thee.

CREON O reprobate, would'st wrangle with thy sire?

HAEMON Because I see thee wrongfully perverse.

CREON And am I wrong, if I maintain my rights?

HAEMON Talk not of rights; thou spurn'st the due of Heaven

CREON O heart corrupt, a woman's minion thou!

HAEMON Slave to dishonor thou wilt never find me.

CREON Thy speech at least was all a plea for her.

HAEMON And thee and me, and for the G.o.ds below.

CREON Living the maid shall never be thy bride.

HAEMON So she shall die, but one will die with her.

CREON Hast come to such a pa.s.s as threaten me?

HAEMON What threat is this, vain counsels to reprove?

CREON Vain fool to instruct thy betters; thou shall rue it.

HAEMON Wert not my father, I had said thou err'st.

CREON Play not the spaniel, thou a woman's slave.

HAEMON When thou dost speak, must no man make reply?

CREON This pa.s.ses bounds. By heaven, thou shalt not rate And jeer and flout me with impunity.

Off with the hateful thing that she may die At once, beside her bridegroom, in his sight.

HAEMON Think not that in my sight the maid shall die, Or by my side; never shalt thou again Behold my face hereafter. Go, consort With friends who like a madman for their mate.

[Exit HAEMON]

CHORUS Thy son has gone, my liege, in angry haste.

Fell is the wrath of youth beneath a smart.

CREON Let him go vent his fury like a fiend: These sisters twain he shall not save from death.

CHORUS Surely, thou meanest not to slay them both?

CREON I stand corrected; only her who touched The body.

CHORUS And what death is she to die?

CREON She shall be taken to some desert place By man untrod, and in a rock-hewn cave, With food no more than to avoid the taint That homicide might bring on all the State, Buried alive. There let her call in aid The King of Death, the one G.o.d she reveres, Or learn too late a lesson learnt at last: 'Tis labor lost, to reverence the dead.

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.