ANT.  That pains me more than all.  II 2
Ah! thou hast touched my father’s misery
    Still mourned anew,
With all the world-famed sorrows on us rolled
    Since Cadmus old. 
O cursed marriage that my mother knew! 
O wretched fortune of my sire, who lay
    Where first he saw the day! 
Such were the authors of my burdened life;
To whom, with curses dowered, never a wife,
    I go to dwell beneath. 
O brother mine, thy princely marriage-tie
Hath been thy downfall, and in this thy death
Thou hast destroyed me ere I die.

CH.  ’Twas pious, we confess,
Thy fervent deed.  But he, who power would show,
Must let no soul of all he rules transgress. 
A self-willed passion was thine overthrow.

ANT.  Friendless, uncomforted of bridal lay, III
Unmourned, they lead me on my destined way. 
Woe for my life forlorn!  I may not see
The sacred round of yon great light
Rising again to greet me from the night;
No friend bemoans my fate, no tear hath fallen for me!

Enter CREON.

CR.  If criminals were suffered to complain
In dirges before death, they ne’er would end. 
Away with her at once, and closing her,
As I commanded, in the vaulty tomb,
Leave her all desolate, whether to die,
Or to live on in that sepulchral cell. 
We are guiltless in the matter of this maid;
Only she shall not share the light of day.

ANT.  O grave! my bridal chamber, prison-house
Eterne, deep-hollowed, whither I am led
To find mine own,—­of whom Persephone
Hath now a mighty number housed in death:—­
I last of all, and far most miserably,
Am going, ere my days have reached their term! 
Yet lives the hope that, when I go, most surely
Dear will my coming be, father, to thee,
And dear to thee, my mother, and to thee,
Brother! since with these very hands I decked
And bathed you after death, and ministered
The last libations.  And I reap this doom
For tending, Polynices, on thy corse. 
Indeed I honoured thee, the wise will say. 
For neither, had I children, nor if one
I had married were laid bleeding on the earth,
Would I have braved the city’s will, or taken
This burden on me.  Wherefore?  I will tell. 
A husband lost might be replaced; a son,
If son were lost to me, might yet be born;
But, with both parents hidden in the tomb,
No brother may arise to comfort me. 
Therefore above all else I honoured thee,
And therefore Creon thought me criminal,
And bold in wickedness, O brother mine! 
And now by servile hands, for all to see,
He hastens me away, unhusbanded,
Before my nuptial, having never known
Or married joy or tender motherhood. 
But desolate and friendless I go down
Alive, O horror! to the vaults of the dead. 
For what transgression of Heaven’s ordinance? 
Alas! how can I look to Heaven? on whom
Call to befriend me? seeing that I have earned,
By piety, the meed of impious?—­
Oh! if this act be what the Gods approve,
In death I may repent me of my deed;
But if they sin who judge me, be their doom
No heavier than they wrongly wreak on me!