| Ode 1 Hypertext Antigone |
| Chorus. Numberless are the world’s wonders, but none More wonderful than man; the storm-grey sea yields to his prows; the huge crests bear him high; Earth, holy and inexhaustible, is graven With shining furrows where the plows have gone Year after year, the timeless labor of stallions. The light-boned birds and breasts that cling to cover, The lithe filth lighting their reaches of dim water, All are taken, tamed in the net of his mind; The lion on the hill, the wild horse windy-maned, Resign to him; and his blunt yoke has broken The sultry shoulders of the mountain bull. Words also, and thought as rapid as air, He fashions to his good use; statecraft is his, And his the skill that deflects the arrows of snow, The spears of winder rain: from every wind He has made himself secure-from all but one: In the late wind of death he cannot stand. O clear intelligence, force beyond all measure! O fate of man, working both good and evil! When the laws are kept, how proudly his city stands! When the laws are broken, what of is city then? Never may the anarchic man find rest at my hearth, Never be it said that my thoughts are his thoughts. . |
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| CREON Woe for the sins of a darkened soul, stubborn sins, fraught with death! Ah, ye behold us, the sire who hath slain, the son who hath perished! Woe is me, for the wretched blindness of my counsels! Alas, my son, thou hast died in thy youth, by a timeless doom, woe is me!-thy spirit hath fled, -not by thy folly, but by mine own! |