MESSENGER:
LEADER OF THE CHORUS:
MESSENGER:
LEADER:
MESSENGER:
LEADER:
MESSENGER:
LEADER:
MESSENGER:
LEADER:
(Enter EURYDICE from the palace.)
EURYDICE:
MESSENGER:
(EURYDICE retires into the house.)
LEADER:
Dwellers by the house of Cadmus and of Amphion, there is no estate
of mortal life that I would ever praise or blame as settled. Fortune
raises and Fortune humbles the lucky or unlucky from day to day, and
no one can prophesy to men concerning those things which are
established. For CREON was blest once, as I count bliss;
he had saved this land of
Cadmus from its foes; he was clothed with sole dominion in the land;
he reigned, the glorious sire of princely children. And now all hath
been lost. For when a man hath forfeited his pleasures, I count him
not as living,-I hold him but a breathing corpse. Heap up riches in
thy house, if thou wilt; live in kingly state; yet, if there be no
gladness therewith, I would not give the shadow of a vapour for all
the rest, compared with joy.
And what is this new grief that thou hast to tell for our princes?
Death; and the living are guilty for the dead.
And who is the slayer? Who the stricken? Speak.
Haemon hath perished; his blood hath been shed by no stranger.
By his father's hand, or by his own?
By his own, in wrath with his sire for the murder.
O prophet, how true, then, hast thou proved thy word!
These things stand thus; ye must consider of the rest.
Lo, I see the hapless Eurydice, Creon's wife, approaching; she
comes from the house by chance, haply,-or because she knows the
tidings of her son.
People of Thebes, I heard your words as I was going forth, to
salute the goddess Pallas with my prayers. Even as I was loosing the
fastenings of the gate, to open it, the message of a household woe
smote on mine ear: I sank back, terror-stricken, into the arms of my
handmaids, and my senses fled. But say again what the tidings were;
I shall hear them as one who is no stranger to sorrow.
Dear lady, I will witness of what I saw, and will leave no word of
the truth untold. Why, indeed, should I soothe thee with words in
which must presently be found false? Truth is ever best.-I attended
thy lord as his guide to the furthest part of the plain, where the
body of Polyneices, torn by dogs, still lay unpitied. We prayed the
goddess of the roads, and Pluto, in mercy to restrain their wrath;
we washed the dead with holy washing; and with freshly-plucked
boughs we solemnly burned such relics as there were. We raised a
high mound of his native earth; and then we turned away to enter the
maiden's nuptial chamber with rocky couch, the caverned mansion of the
bride of Death. And, from afar off, one of us heard a voice of loud
wailing at that bride's unhallowed bower; and came to tell our
master Creon.
And as the king drew nearer, doubtful sounds of a bitter cry
floated around him; he groaned, and said in accents of anguish,
'Wretched that I am, can my foreboding be true? Am I going on the
wofullest way that ever I went? My son's voice greets me.-Go, my
servants,-haste ye nearer, and when ye have reached the tomb, pass
through the gap, where the stones have been wrenched away, to the
cell's very mouth,-and look. and see if 'tis Haemon's voice that I
know, or if mine ear is cheated by the gods.'
This search, at our despairing master's word, we went to make; and
in the furthest part of the tomb we descried her hanging by the
neck, slung by a thread-wrought halter of fine linen: while he was
embracing her with arms thrown around her waist, bewailing the loss of
his bride who is with the dead, and his father's deeds, and his own
ill-starred love.
But his father, when he saw him, cried aloud with a dread cry
and went in, and called to him with a voice of wailing:-'Unhappy, what
deed hast thou done! What thought hath come to thee? What manner of
mischance hath marred thy reason? Come forth, my child! I pray
thee-I implore!' But the boy glared at him with fierce eyes, spat in
his face, and, without a word of answer, drew his cross-hilted
sword:-as his father rushed forth in flight, he missed his
aim;-then, hapless one, wroth with himself, he straightway leaned with
all his weight against his sword, and drove it, half its length,
into his side; and, while sense lingered, he clasped the maiden to his
faint embrace, and, as he gasped, sent forth on her pale cheek the
swift stream of the oozing blood.
Corpse enfolding corpse he lies; he hath won his nuptial rites,
poor youth, not here, yet in the halls of Death; and he hath witnessed
to mankind that, of all curses which cleave to man, ill counsel is the
sovereign curse.
What wouldst thou augur from this? The lady hath turned back,
and is gone, without a word, good or evil.