Good Creon hath pronounced for thy behoof—­
Ay, and for mine!  I am not left out!—­And now
He moves this way to promulgate his will
To such as have not heard, nor lightly holds
The thing he bids, but, whoso disobeys,
The citizens shall stone him to the death. 
This is the matter, and thou wilt quickly show
If thou art noble, or fallen below thy birth.

ISM.  Unhappy one!  But what can I herein
Avail to do or undo?

ANT.  Wilt thou share
The danger and the labour?  Make thy choice.

ISM.  Of what wild enterprise?  What canst thou mean?

ANT.  Wilt thou join hand with mine to lift the dead?

ISM.  To bury him, when all have been forbidden? 
Is that thy thought?

ANT.  To bury my own brother
And thine, even though thou wilt not do thy part. 
I will not be a traitress to my kin.

ISM.  Fool-hardy girl! against the word of Creon?

ANT.  He hath no right to bar me from mine own.

ISM.  Ah, sister, think but how our father fell,
Hated of all and lost to fair renown,
Through self-detected crimes—­with his own hand,
Self-wreaking, how he dashed out both his eyes: 
Then how the mother-wife, sad two-fold name! 
With twisted halter bruised her life away,
Last, how in one dire moment our two brothers
With internecine conflict at a blow
Wrought out by fratricide their mutual doom. 
Now, left alone, O think how beyond all
Most piteously we twain shall be destroyed,
If in defiance of authority
We traverse the commandment of the King! 
We needs must bear in mind we are but women,
Never created to contend with men;
Nay more, made victims of resistless power,
To obey behests more harsh than this to-day. 
I, then, imploring those beneath to grant
Indulgence, seeing I am enforced in this,
Will yield submission to the powers that rule,
Small wisdom were it to overpass the bound.

ANT.  I will not urge you! no! nor if now you list
To help me, will your help afford me joy. 
Be what you choose to be!  This single hand
Shall bury our lost brother.  Glorious
For me to take this labour and to die! 
Dear to him will my soul be as we rest
In death, when I have dared this holy crime. 
My time for pleasing men will soon be over;
Not so my duty toward the Dead!  My home
Yonder will have no end.  You, if you will,
May pour contempt on laws revered on High.

ISM.  Not from irreverence.  But I have no strength
To strive against the citizens’ resolve.

ANT.  Thou, make excuses!  I will go my way
To raise a burial-mound to my dear brother.

ISM.  Oh, hapless maiden, how I fear for thee!

ANT.  Waste not your fears on me!  Guide your own fortune.

ISM.  Ah! yet divulge thine enterprise to none,
But keep the secret close, and so will I.