And therefore where I left, I will pursue
  This ancient story, whether false or true,
  In hope it may be mended with a new. 
  The prince I mention’d, full of high renown,
  In this array drew near the Athenian town;
  When in his pomp and utmost of his pride,
  Marching he chanced to cast his eye aside, 40
  And saw a choir of mourning dames, who lay
  By two and two across the common way: 
  At his approach they raised a rueful cry,
  And beat their breasts, and held their hands on high,
  Creeping and crying, till they seized at last
  His courser’s bridle, and his feet embraced. 
  Tell me, said Theseus, what and whence you are,
  And why this funeral pageant you prepare? 
  Is this the welcome of my worthy deeds,
  To meet my triumph in ill-omen’d weeds? 50
  Or envy you my praise, and would destroy
  With grief my pleasures, and pollute my joy? 
  Or are you injured, and demand relief? 
  Name your request, and I will ease your grief.

    The most in years of all the mourning train
  Began; but swooned first away for pain,
  Then scarce recover’d spoke:  Nor envy we
  Thy great renown, nor grudge thy victory;
  ’Tis thine, O king, the afflicted to redress,
  And fame has fill’d the world with thy success:  60
  We wretched women sue for that alone,
  Which of thy goodness is refused to none;
  Let fall some drops of pity on our grief,
  If what we beg be just, and we deserve relief: 
  For none of us, who now thy grace implore,
  But held the rank of sovereign queen before;
  Till, thanks to giddy chance, which never bears,
  That mortal bliss should last for length of years,
  She cast us headlong from our high estate,
  And here in hope of thy return we wait:  70
  And long have waited in the temple nigh,
  Built to the gracious goddess Clemency. 
  But reverence thou the Power whose name it bears,
  Relieve the oppress’d, and wipe the widow’s tears. 
  I, wretched I, have other fortune seen,
  The wife of Capaneus, and once a queen: 
  At Thebes he fell; cursed be the fatal day! 
  And all the rest thou seest in this array,
  To make their moan, their lords in battle lost
  Before that town besieged by our confederate host:  80
  But Creon, old and impious, who commands
  The Theban city, and usurps the lands,
  Denies the rites of funeral fires to those
  Whose breathless bodies yet he calls his foes. 
  Unburn’d, unburied, on a heap they lie;
  Such is their fate, and such his tyranny;
  No friend has leave to bear away the dead,
  But with their lifeless limbs his hounds are fed. 
  At this she shriek’d aloud; the mournful train
  Echoed her grief, and grovelling on the plain, 90
  With groans, and hands upheld, to move his mind,
  Besought his pity to their helpless kind!