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Fragment Of An ‘Antigone’
By Matthew Arnold
THE CHORUS
Well hath he done who hath seiz’d happiness.
For little do the all-containing Hours,
Though opulent, freely give.
Who, weighing that life well
Fortune presents unpray’d,
Declines her ministry, and carves his own:
And, justice not infring’d,
Makes his own welfare his unswerv’d-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 group’d, we live: and many shocks
Our order heaven-ordain’d
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 link’d 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 Creon’s law, Polynices,
Robs of a lov’d 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 flush’d over the stormy frith
Of loud Euripus, saw
Saw and snatch’d, wild with love,
From the pine-dotted spurs
Of Parnes, where thy waves,
Asopus, gleam rock-hemm’d;
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 o’ertook that love.
For she desir’d 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,
Succumb’d to the envy of unkind Gods:
And, her beautiful arms unclasping,
Her fair Youth unwillingly gave.
THE CHORUS
Nor, though enthron’d too high
To fear assault of envious Gods,
His belov’d 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 open’d and whelm’d them and him;
And through the void air sang
At large his enemy’s spear.
And fain would Zeus have sav’d his tired son
Beholding him where the Two Pillars stand
O’er the sun-redden’d Western Straits:
Or at his work in that dim lower world.
Fain would he have recall’d
The fraudulent oath which bound
To a much feebler wight the heroic man:
But he preferr’d 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 rous’d Maliac gulph,
And scar’d Oetaean snows,
To achieve his son’s deliverance, O my child.
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