FRAGMENT OF AN ANTIGONE.'

WE

The Chorus.

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, alone, 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 thou, 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.3

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.

Натоп.

But, like me, she, wroth, complaining,

Succumb'd 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 open'd and whelm'd them and him; And through the void air sang

At large his enemy's spear.

And fain would Zeus have saved his tired son

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

To a much feebler wight the heroic man;

But he preferr'd Fate to his strong desire. Nor did there need less than the burning pile [DRAM. & LYR.]

F