Fragment Of An Antigone
By Matthew Arnold
THE CHORUS
Well hath he done who hath seizd happiness.
For little do the all-containing Hours,
Though opulent, freely give.
Who, weighing that life well
Fortune presents unprayd,
Declines her ministry, and carves his own:
And, justice not infringd,
Makes his own welfare his unswervd-from law.
He does well too, who keeps that clue the mild
Birth-Goddess and the austere Fates first gave.
For from the clay when these
Bring him, a weeping child,
First to the light, and mark
A country for him, kinsfolk, and a home,
Unguided he remains,
Till the Fates come again, alone, with death.
In little companies,
And, our own place once left,
Ignorant where to stand, or whom to avoid,
By city and household groupd, we live: and many shocks
Our order heaven-ordaind
Must every day endure.
Voyages, exiles, hates, dissensions, wars.
Besides what waste He makes,
The all-hated, order-breaking.
Without friend, city, or home,
Death, who dissevers all.
Him then I praise, who dares
To self-selected good
Prefer obedience to the primal law,
Which consecrates the ties of blood: for these, indeed,
Are to the Gods a care:
That touches but himself.
For every day man may be linkd and loos d
With strangers: but the bond
Original, deep-inwound,
Of blood, can he not bind
Nor, if Fate binds, not bear.
But hush! Haemon, whom Antigone,
Robbing herself of life in burying,
Against Creons law, Polynices,
Robs of a lovd bride; pale, imploring,
Waiting her passage,
Forth from the palace hitherward comes.
HAEMON
No, no, old men, Creon I curse not.
I weep, Thebans,
One than Creon crueller far.
For he, he, at least, by slaying her,
August laws doth mightily vindicate:
But thou, too-bold, headstrong, pitiless,
Ah me!, honourest more than thy lover,
O Antigone,
A dead, ignorant, thankless corpse.
THE CHORUS
Nor was the love untrue
Which the Dawn-Goddess bore
To that fair youth she erst
Leaving the salt sea-beds
And coming flushd over the stormy frith
Of loud Euripus, saw
Saw and snatchd, wild with love,
From the pine-dotted spurs
Of Parnes, where thy waves,
Asopus, gleam rock-hemmd;
The Hunter of the Tanagraean Field.
But him, in his sweet prime,
By severance immature,
By Artemis soft shafts,
She, though a Goddess born,
Saw in the rocky isle of Delos die.
Such end oertook that love.
For she desird to make
Immortal mortal man,
And blend his happy life,
Far from the Gods, with hers:
To him postponing an eternal law.
HAEMON
But, like me, she, wroth, complaining,
Succumbd to the envy of unkind Gods:
And, her beautiful arms unclasping,
Her fair Youth unwillingly gave.
THE CHORUS
Nor, though enthrond too high
To fear assault of envious Gods,
His belovd Argive Seer would Zeus retain
From his appointed end
In this our Thebes: but when
His flying steeds came near
To cross the steep Ismenian glen,
The broad Earth opend and whelmd them and him;
And through the void air sang
At large his enemys spear.
And fain would Zeus have savd his tired son
Beholding him where the Two Pillars stand
Oer the sun-reddend Western Straits:
Or at his work in that dim lower world.
Fain would he have recalld
The fraudulent oath which bound
To a much feebler wight the heroic man:
But he preferrd Fate to his strong desire.
Nor did there need less than the burning pile
Under the towering Trachis crags,
And the Spercheius vale, shaken with groans,
And the rousd Maliac gulph,
And scard Oetaean snows,
To achieve his sons deliverance, O my child.