with thee die.

ANTIGONE
Claim not a work in which thou hadst no hand;
One death sufficeth. Wherefore should'st thou die?

ISMENE
What would life profit me bereft of thee?

ANTIGONE
Ask Creon, he's thy kinsman and best friend.

ISMENE
Why taunt me? Find'st thou pleasure in these gibes?

ANTIGONE
'Tis a sad mockery, if indeed I mock.

ISMENE
O say if I can help thee even now.

ANTIGONE
No, save thyself; I grudge not thy escape.

ISMENE
Is e'en this boon denied, to share thy lot?

ANTIGONE
Yea, for thou chosed'st life, and I to die.

ISMENE
Thou canst not say that I did not protest.

ANTIGONE
Well, some approved thy wisdom, others mine.

ISMENE
But now we stand convicted, both alike.

ANTIGONE
Fear not; thou livest, I died long ago
Then when I gave my life to save the dead.

CREON
Both maids, methinks, are crazed. One suddenly
Has lost her wits, the other was born mad.

ISMENE
Yea, so it falls, sire, when misfortune comes,
The wisest even lose their mother wit.

CREON
I' faith thy wit forsook thee when thou mad'st
Thy choice with evil-doers to do ill.

ISMENE
What life for me without my sister here?

CREON
Say not thy sister _here_: thy sister's dead.

ISMENE
What, wilt thou slay thy own son's plighted bride?

CREON
Aye, let him raise him seed from other fields.

ISMENE
No new espousal can be like the old.

CREON
A plague on trulls who court and woo our sons.

ANTIGONE
O Haemon, how thy sire dishonors thee!

CREON
A plague on thee and thy accursed bride!

CHORUS
What, wilt thou rob thine own son of his bride?

CREON
'Tis death that bars this marriage, not his sire.

CHORUS
So her death-warrant, it would seem, is sealed.

CREON
By you, as first by me; off with them, guards,
And keep them close. Henceforward let them learn
To live as women use, not roam at large.
For e'en the bravest spirits run away
When they perceive death pressing on life's heels.

CHORUS
(Str. 1)
Thrice blest are they who never tasted pain!
If once the curse of Heaven attaint a race,
The infection lingers on and speeds apace,
Age after age, and each the cup must drain.

So when Etesian blasts from Thrace downpour
Sweep o'er the blackening main and whirl to land
From Ocean's cavernous depths his ooze and sand,
Billow on billow thunders on the shore.

(Ant. 1)
On the Labdacidae I see descending
Woe upon woe; from days of old some god
Laid on the ra