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

CREON
This passes 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 god 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.