THE SEVEN AGAINST THEBES

THE SEVEN AGAINST THEBESARGUMENTLaius, king of the Cadmeans, was warned by the oracle of Delphi that he should not beget a child. But he disobeyed this command, and when a son was born to him, he cast the child away, that he might perish on Cithaeron. But a herdsman found the babe yet alive, and he was nourished in Corinth and grew to manhood, not knowing his true parentage, and was named Oedipus; and he slew, unknowingly, his father, Laius, and afterwards saved the town of the Cadmeans from a devouring monster, and married the widowed queen, Iocaste, and begat sons and daughters. But when he learned what he had wrought unwittingly, he fell into despair, and the queen slew herself. But before Oedipus died, he laid a curse upon his male children, Eteocles and Polynices, that they should make even division of the kingdom by the sword; and it fell out even so, for the two brothers strove together for the inheritance, and Polynices brought an army, from Argos, against Eteocles; and the brothers fought, and fell each by the other’s hand, and the curse was fulfilled.DRAMATIS PERSONAEETEOCLES.A SPY.CHORUS OF CADMEAN MAIDENS.ANTIGONE.ISMENE.A HERALD.ETEOCLES.Clansmen of Cadmus, at the signal givenBy time and season must the ruler speakWho sets the course and steers the ship of StateWith hand upon the tiller, and with eyeWatchful against the treachery of sleep.For if all go aright,thank Heaven, men say,But if adversely—which may God forefend!—One name on many lips, from street to street,Would bear the bruit and rumour of the time,Down with Eteocles!—a clamorous curse,A dirge of ruin. May averting ZeusMake good his title here, in Cadmus’ hold!You it beseems now boys unripened yetTo lusty manhood, men gone past the primeAnd increase of the full begetting seed,And those whom youth and manhood well combinedArray for action—all to rise in aidOf city, shrines, and altars of all powersWho guard our land; that ne’er, to end of time,Be blotted out the sacred service dueTo our sweet mother-land and to her brood.For she it was who to their guest-right calledYour waxing youth, was patient of the toil,And cherished you on the land’s gracious lap,Alike to plant the hearth and bear the shieldIn loyal service, for an hour like this.Mark now! until to-day, luck rules our scale;For we, though long beleaguered, in the mainHave with our sallies struck the foemen hard.But now the seer, the feeder of the birds,(Whose art unerring and prophetic skillOf ear and mind divines their utteranceWithout the lore of fire interpreted)Foretelleth, by the mastery of his art,That now an onset of Achaea’s hostIs by a council of the night designedTo fall in double strength upon our walls.Up and away, then, to the battlements,The gates, the bulwarks! don your panoplies,Array you at the breast-work, take your standOn floorings of the towers, and with good heartStand firm for sudden sallies at the gates,Nor hold too heinous a respect for hordesSent on you from afar: some god will guard!I too, for shrewd espial of their camp,Have sent forth scouts, and confidence is mineThey will not fail nor tremble at their task,And, with their news, I fear no foeman’s guile.Enter aSPY.THE SPY.Eteocles, high king of Cadmus’ folk,I stand here with news certified and sureFrom Argos’ camp, things by myself descried.Seven warriors yonder, doughty chiefs of might,Into the crimsoned concave of a shieldHave shed a bull’s blood, and, with hands immersedInto the gore of sacrifice, have swornBy Ares, lord of fight, and by thy name,Blood-lapping Terror,Let our oath be heard—Either to raze the walls, make void the holdOf Cadmus—strive his children as they may—Or, dying here, to make the foemen’s landWith blood impasted. Then, as memory’s giftUnto their parents at the far-off home,Chaplets they hung upon Adrastus’ car,With eyes tear-dropping, but no word of moan.For their steeled spirit glowed with high resolve,As lions pant, with battle in their eyes.For them, no weak alarm delays the clearIssues of death or life! I parted thenceEven as they cast the lots, how each should lead,Against which gate, his serried company.Rank then thy bravest, with what speed thou may’st,Hard by the gates, to dash on them, for now,Full-armed, the onward ranks of Argos come!The dust whirls up, and from their panting steedsWhite foamy flakes like snow bedew the plain.Thou therefore, chieftain! like a steersman skilled,Enshield the city’s bulwarks, ere the blastOf war comes darting on them! hark, the roarOf the great landstorm with its waves of men!Take Fortune by the forelock! for the rest,By yonder dawn-light will I scan the fieldClear and aright, and surety of my wordShall keep thee scatheless of the coming storm.ETEOCLES.O Zeus and Earth and city-guarding gods,And thou, my father’s Curse, of baneful might,Spare ye at least this town, nor root it up,By violence of the foemen, stock and stem!For here, from home and hearth, rings Hellas’ tongue.Forbid that e’er the yoke of slaveryShould bow this land of freedom, Cadmus’ hold!Be ye her help! your cause I plead with mine—A city saved doth honour to her gods![ExitETEOCLES,etc.]Enter theCHORUS OF MAIDENS.CHORUS.I wail in the stress of my terror, and shrill is my cry of despair.The foemen roll forth from their camp as a billow, and onward they bear!Their horsemen are swift in the forefront, the dust rises up to the sky,A signal, though speechless, of doom, a herald more clear than a cry!Hoof-trampled, the land of my love bears onward the din to mine ears.As a torrent descending a mountain, it thunders and echoes and nears!The doom is unloosened and cometh! O kings and O queens of high Heaven,Prevail that it fall not upon us: the sign for their onset is given—They stream to the walls from without, white-shielded and keen for the fray.They storm to the citadel gates— what god or what goddess can stayThe rush of their feet? to what shrine shall I bow me in terror and pray?O gods high-throned in bliss, we must crouch at the shrines in your home!Not here must we tarry and wail: shield clashes on shield as they come—And now, even now is the hour for the robes and the chaplets of prayer!Mine eyes feel the flash of the sword, the clang is instinct with the spear!Is thy hand set against us, O Ares, in ruin and wrath to o’erwhelmThine own immemorial land, O god of the golden helm?Look down upon us, we beseech thee, on the land that thou lovest of old,And ye, O protecting gods, in pity your people behold!Yea, save us, the maidenly troop, from the doom and despair of the slave,For the crests of the foemen come onward, their rush is the rush of a waveRolled on by the war-god’s breath! almighty one, hear us and saveFrom the grasp of the Argives’ might! to the ramparts of Cadmus they crowd,And, clenched in the teeth of the steeds, the bits clink horror aloud!And seven high chieftains of war, with spear and with panoply bold,Are set, by the law of the lot, to storm the seven gates of our hold!Be near and befriend us, O Pallas, the Zeus-born maiden of might!O lord of the steed and the sea, be thy trident uplifted to smiteIn eager desire of the fray, Poseidon! and Ares come down,In fatherly presence revealed, to rescue Harmonia’s town!Thine too, Aphrodite, we are! thou art mother and queen of our race,To thee we cry out in our need, from thee let thy children have grace!Ye too, to scare back the foe, be your cry as a wolf’s howl wild,Thou, O the wolf-lord, and thou, of she-wolf Leto the child!Woe and alack for the sound, for the rattle of cars to the wall,And the creak of the grinding axles! O Hera, to thee is our call!Artemis, maiden beloved! the air is distraught with the spears,And whither doth destiny drive us, and where is the goal of our fears?The blast of the terrible stones on the ridge of our wall is not stayed,At the gates is the brazen clash of the bucklers—Apollo to aid!Thou too, O daughter of Zeus, who guidest the wavering frayTo the holy decision of fate, Athena! be with us to-day!Come down to the sevenfold gates and harry the foemen away!O gods and O sisters of gods, our bulwark and guard! we beseechThat ye give not our war-worn hold to a rabble of alien speech!List to the call of the maidens, the hands held up for the right,Be near us, protect us, and show that the city is dear in your sight!Have heed for her sacrifice holy, and thought of her offerings take,Forget not her love and her worship, be near her and smite for her sake!Re-enterETEOCLES.ETEOCLESHark to my question, things detestable!Is this aright and for the city’s weal,And helpful to our army thus beset,That ye before the statues of our godsShould fling yourselves, and scream and shriek your fears?Immodest, uncontrolled! Be this my lot—Never in troublous nor in peaceful daysTo dwell with aught that wears a female form!Where womankind has power, no man can house,Where womankind feeds panic, ruin rulesAlike in house and city! Look you now—Your flying feet, and rumour of your fears,Have spread a soulless panic on our walls,And they without do go from strength to strength,And we within make breach upon ourselves!Such fate it brings, to house with womankind.Therefore if any shall resist my rule—Or man, or woman, or some sexless thing—The vote of sentence shall decide their doom,And stones of execution, past escape,Shall finish all. Let not a woman’s voiceBe loud in council! for the things without,A man must care; let women keep within—Even then is mischief all too probable!Hear ye? or speak I to unheeding ears?CHORUS.Ah, but I shudder, child of Oedipus!I heard the clash and clang!The axles rolled and rumbled; woe to usFire-welded bridles rang!ETEOCLES.Say—when a ship is strained and deep in brine,Did e’er a seaman mend his chance, who leftThe helm, t’invoke the image at the prow?CHORUS.Ah, but I fled to the shrines, I called to our helpers on high,When the stone-shower roared at the portals!I sped to the temples aloft, and loud was my call and my cry,Look down and deliver. Immortals!ETEOCLES.Ay, pray amain that stone may vanquish steel!Were not that grace of gods? ay, ay—methinks,When cities fall, the gods go forth from them!CHORUS.Ah, let me die, or ever I beholdThe gods go forth, in conflagration dire!The foemen’s rush and raid, and all our holdWrapt in the burning fire!ETEOCLES.Cry not: on Heaven, in impotent debate!What saith the saw?—Good saving Strength, in verity,Out of Obedience breeds the babe Prosperity.CHORUS.’Tis true: yet stronger is the power divine,And oft, when man’s estate is overbowedWith bitter pangs, disperses from his eyneThe heavy, hanging cloud!ETEOCLES.Let men with sacrifice and auguryApproach the gods, when comes the tug of war;Maids must be silent and abide within.CHORUS.By grace of the gods we hold it, a city untamed of the spear,And the battlement wards from the wall the foe and his aspect of fear!What need of displeasure herein?ETEOCLES.Ay, pay thy vows to Heaven; I grudge them not,But—so thou strike no fear into our men—Have calm at heart, nor be too much afraid.CHORUS.Alack, it is fresh in mine ears, the clamour and crash of the fray,And up to our holiest height I sped on my timorous way,Bewildered, beset by the din!ETEOCLES.Now, if ye hear the bruit of death or wounds,Give not yourselves o’ermuch to shriek and scream,For Ares ravens upon human flesh.CHORUS.Ah, but the snorting of the steeds I hear!ETEOCLES.Then, if thou hearest, hear them not too well!CHORUS.Hark, the earth rumbles, as they close us round!ETEOCLES.Enough if I am here, with plans prepared.CHORUS.Alack, the battering at the gates is loud!ETEOCLES.Peace! stay your tongue, or else the town may hear!CHORUS.O warders of the walls, betray them not!ETEOCLES.Bestrew your cries! in silence face your fate.CHORUS.Gods of our city, see me not enslaved!ETEOCLES.On me, on all, thy cries bring slavery.CHORUS.Zeus, strong to smite, turn upon foes thy blow!ETEOCLES.Zeus, what a curse are women, wrought by thee!CHORUS.Weak wretches, even as men, when cities fall.ETEOCLES.What! clasping gods, yet voicing thy despair?CHORUS.In the sick heart, fear machete prey of speech.ETEOCLES.Light is the thing I ask thee—do my will!CHORUS.Ask swiftly: swiftly shall I know my power.ETEOCLES.Silence, weak wretch! nor put thy friends in fear.CHORUS.I speak no more: the general fate be mine!ETEOCLES.I take that word as wiser than the rest.Nay, more: these images possess thy will—Pray, in their strength, that Heaven be on our side!Then hear my prayers withal, and then ring outThe female triumph-note, thy privilege—Yea, utter forth the usage Hellas knows,The cry beside the altars, sounding clearEncouragement to friends, alarm to foes.But I unto all gods that guard our walls,Lords of the plain or warders of the martAnd to Isthmus’ stream and Dirge’s rills,I swear, if Fortune smiles and saves our town,That we will make our altars reek with bloodOf sheep and kine, shed forth unto the gods,And with victorious tokens front our fannies—Corsets and cases that once our foemen wore,Spear-shattered now—to deck these holy homes!Be such thy vows to Heaven—away with sighs,Away with outcry vain and barbarous,That shall avail not, in a general doom!But I will back, and, with six chosen menMyself the seventh, to confront the foeIn this great aspect of a poisèd war,Return and plant them at the sevenfold gates,Or e’er the prompt and clamorous battle-scoutsHaste to inflame our counsel with the need.[ExitETEOCLES.]CHORUS.I mark his words, yet, dark and deep,My heart’s alarm forbiddeth sleep!Close-clinging cares around my soulEnkindle fears beyond control,Presageful of what doom may fallFrom the great leaguer of the wall!So a poor dove is faint with fearFor her weak nestlings, while anewGlides on the snaky ravisher!In troop and squadron, hand on hand,They climb and throng, and hemmed we stand,While on the warders of our townThe flinty shower comes hurtling down!Gods born of Zeus! put forth your mightFor Cadmus’ city, realm, and right!What nobler land shall e’er be yours,If once ye give to hostile powersThe deep rich soil, and Dirce’s wave,The nursing stream, Poseidon gaveAnd Tethys’ children? Up and save!Cast on the ranks that hem us roundA deadly panic, make them flingTheir arms in terror on the ground,And die in carnage! thence shall springHigh honour for our clan and king!Come at our wailing cry, and standAs thronèd sentries of our land!For pity and sorrow it were that this immemorial townShould sink to be slave of the spear, to dust and to ashes gone down,By the gods of Achaean worship and arms of Achaean mightSacked and defiled and dishonoured, its women the prize of the fight—That, haled by the hair as a steed, their mantles dishevelled and torn,The maiden and matron alike should pass to the wedlock of scorn!I hear it arise from the city, the manifold wail of despair—Woe, woe for the doom that shall be—as in grasp of the foeman they fare!For a woe and a weeping it is, if the maiden inviolate flowerIs plucked by the foe in his might, not culled in the bridal bower!Alas for the hate and the horror—how say it?—less hateful by farIs the doom to be slain by the sword, hewn down in the carnage of war!For wide, ah! wide is the woe when the foeman has mounted the wall;There is havoc and terror and flame, and the dark smoke broods over all,And wild is the war-god’s breath, as in frenzy of conquest he springs,And pollutes with the blast of his lips the glory of holiest things!Up to the citadel rise clash and din,The war-net closes in,The spear is in the heart: with blood imbruedYoung mothers wail aloud,For children at their breast who scream and die!And boys and maidens fly,Yet scape not the pursuer, in his greedTo thrust and grasp and feed!Robber with robber joins, each calls his mateUnto the feast of hate—The banquet, lo! is spread—seize, rend, and tear!No need to choose or share!And all the wealth of earth to waste is poured—A sight by all abhorred!The grieving housewives eye it;heaped and blent,Earth’s boons are spoiled and spent,And waste to nothingness; and O alas,Young maids, forlorn ye pass—Fresh horror at your hearts—beneath the powerOf those who crop the flower!Ye own the ruffian ravisher for lord,And night brings rites abhorred!Woe, woe for you! upon your grief and painThere comes a fouler stain.Enter on one sideTHE SPY;on the otherETEOCLESand theSIX CHAMPIONS.SEMI-CHORUS.Look, friends! methinks the scout, who parted henceTo spy upon the foemen, comes with news,His feet as swift as wafting chariot-wheels.SEMI-CHORUS.Ay, and our king, the son of Oedipus,Comes prompt to time, to learn the spy’s report—His heart is fainter than his foot is fast!THE SPY.Well have I scanned the foe, and well can sayUnto which chief, by lot, each gate is given.Tydeus already with his onset-cryStorms at the gate called Proetides; but himThe seer Amphiaraus holds at halt,Nor wills that he should cross Ismenus’ ford,Until the sacrifices promise fair.But Tydeus, mad with lust of blood and broil,Like to a cockatrice at noontide hour,Hisses out wrath and smites with scourge of tongueThe prophet-son of Oecleus—Wise thou art,Faint against war, and holding back from death!With such revilings loud upon his lipsHe waves the triple plumes that o’er his helmFloat overshadowing, as a courser’s mane;And at his shield’s rim, terror in their tone,Clang and reverberate the brazen bells.And this proud sign, wrought on his shield, he bears—The vault of heaven, inlaid with blazing stars;And, for the boss, the bright moon glows at full,The eye of night, the first and lordliest star.Thus with high-vaunted armour, madly bold,He clamours by the stream-bank, wild for war,As a steed panting grimly on his bit,Held in and chafing for the trumpet’s bray!Whom wilt thou set against him? when the gatesOf Proetus yield, who can his rush repel?ETEOCLES.To me, no blazon on a foeman’s shieldShall e’er present a fear! such pointed threatsAre powerless to wound; his plumes and bells,Without a spear, are snakes without a sting.Nay, more—that pageant of which thou tellest—The nightly sky displayed, ablaze with stars,Upon his shield, palters with double sense—One headstrong fool will find its truth anon!For, if night fall upon his eyes in death,Yon vaunting blazon will its own truth prove,And he is prophet of his folly’s fall.Mine shall it be, to pit against his powerThe loyal son of Astacus, as guardTo hold the gateways—a right valiant soul,Who has in heed the throne of ModestyAnd loathes the speech of Pride, and evermoreShrinks from the base, but knows no other fear.He springs by stock from those whom Ares spared,The men called Sown, a right son of the soil,And Melanippus styled. Now, what his armTo-day shall do, rests with the dice of war,And Ares shall ordain it; but his causeHath the true badge of Right, to urge him onTo guard, as son, his motherland from wrong.CHORUS.Then may the gods give fortune fairUnto our chief, sent forth to dareWar’s terrible arbitrament!But ah! when champions wend away,I shudder, lest, from out the fray,Only their blood-stained wrecks be sent!THE SPY.Nay, let him pass, and the gods’ help be his!Next, Capaneus comes on, by lot to leadThe onset at the gates Electran styled:A giant he, more huge than Tydeus’ self,And more than human in his arrogance—May fate forefend his threat against our walls!God willing, or unwilling—such his vaunt—I will lay waste this city; Pallas’ self,Zeus’ warrior maid, although she swoop to earthAnd plant her in my path, shall stay me not.And, for the flashes of the levin-bolt,He holds them harmless as the noontide rays.Mark, too, the symbol on his shield—a manScornfully weaponless but torch in hand,And the flame glows within his grasp, preparedFor ravin: lo, the legend, wrought in words,Fire for the city bring I, flares in gold!Against such wight, send forth—yet whom? what manWill front that vaunting figure and not fear?ETEOCLES.Aha, this profits also, gain on gain!In sooth, for mortals, the tongue’s utteranceBewrays unerringly a foolish pride!Hither stalks Capaneus, with vaunt and threatDefying god-like powers, equipt to act,And, mortal though he be, he strains his tongueIn folly’s ecstasy, and casts aloftHigh swelling words against the ears of Zeus.Right well I trust—if justice grants the word—That, by the might of Zeus, a bolt of flameIn more than semblance shall descend on him.Against his vaunts, though reckless, I have set,To make assurance sure, a warrior stern—Strong Polyphontes, fervid for the fray;A sturdy bulwark, he, by grace of HeavenAnd favour of his champion Artemis!Say on, who holdeth the next gate in ward?CHORUS.Perish the wretch whose vaunt affronts our home!On him the red bolt come,Ere to the maiden bowers his way he cleave,To ravage and bereave!THE SPY.I will say on. Eteoclus is third—To him it fell, what time the third lot sprangO’er the inverted helmet’s brazen rim,To dash his stormers on Neistae gate.He wheels his mares, who at their frontlets chafeAnd yearn to charge upon the gates amain.They snort the breath of pride, and, filled therewith,Their nozzles whistle with barbaric sound.High too and haughty is his shield’s device—An armèd man who climbs, from rung to rung,A scaling ladder, up a hostile wall,Afire to sack and slay; and he too cries,(By letters, full of sound, upon the shield)Not Ares’ self shall cast me from the wall.Look to it, send, against this man, a manStrong to debar the slave’s yoke from our town.ETEOCLES (pointing toMEGAREUS)Send will I—even this man, with luck to aid—By his worth sent already, not by prideAnd vain pretence, is he. ’Tis Megareus,The child of Creon, of the Earth-sprung born!He will not shrink from guarding of the gates,Nor fear the maddened charger’s frenzied neigh,But, if he dies, will nobly quit the scoreFor nurture to the land that gave him birth,Or from the shield-side hew two warriors downEteoclus and the figure that he lifts—Ay, and the city pictured, all in one,And deck with spoils the temple of his sire!Announce the next pair, stint not of thy tongue!CHORUS.O thou, the warder of my home,Grant, unto us, Fate’s favouring tide,Send on the foemen doom!They fling forth taunts of frenzied pride,On them may Zeus with glare of vengeance come;THE SPY.Lo, next him stands a fourth and shouts amain,By Pallas Onca’s portal, and displaysA different challenge; ’tis Hippomedon!Huge the device that starts up from his targeIn high relief; and, I deny it not,I shuddered, seeing how, upon the rim,It made a mighty circle round the shield—No sorry craftsman he, who wrought that workAnd clamped it all around the buckler’s edge!The form was Typhon: from his glowing throatRolled lurid smoke, spark-litten, kin of fire!The flattened edge-work, circling round the whole,Made strong support for coiling snakes that grewErect above the concave of the shield:Loud rang the warrior’s voice; inspired for war,He raves to slay, as doth a Bacchanal,His very glance a terror! of such wightBeware the onset! closing on the gates,He peals his vaunting and appalling cry!ETEOCLES.Yet first our Pallas Onca—wardress she,Planting her foot hard by her gate—shall stand,The Maid against the ruffian, and repelHis force, as from her brood the mother-birdBeats back the wintered serpent’s venom’d fangAnd next, by her, is Oenops’ gallant son,Hyperbius, chosen to confront this foe,Ready to seek his fate at Fortune’s shrine!In form, in valour, and in skill of arms,None shall gainsay him. See how wisely wellHermes hath set the brave against the strong!Confronted shall they stand, the shield of eachBearing the image of opposing gods:One holds aloft his Typhon breathing fire,But, on the other’s shield, in symbol sitsZeus, calm and strong, and fans his bolt to flame—Zeus, seen of all, yet seen of none to fail!Howbeit, weak is trust reposed in Heaven—Yet are we upon Zeus’ victorious side,The foe, with those he worsted—if in soothZeus against Typhon held the upper hand,And if Hyperbius, (as well may hapWhen two such foes such diverse emblems bear)Have Zeus upon his shield, a saving sign.CHORUS.High faith is mine that he whose shieldBears, against Zeus, the thing of hate.The giant Typhon, thus revealed,A monster loathed of gods eterneAnd mortal men—this doom shall earnA shattered skull, before the gate!THE SPY.Heaven send it so!A fifth assailant nowIs set against our fifth, the northern, gate,Fronting the death-mound where Amphion liesThe child of Zeus.This foeman vows his faith,Upon a mystic spear-head which he deemsMore holy than a godhead and more sureTo find its mark than any glance of eye,That, will they, nill they, he will storm and sackThe hold of the Cadmeans. Such his oath—His, the bold warrior, yet of childish years,A bud of beauty’s foremost flower, the sonOf Zeus and of the mountain maid. I markHow the soft down is waxing on his cheek,Thick and close-growing in its tender prime—In name, not mood, is he a maiden’s child—Parthenopaeus; large and bright his eyesBut fierce the wrath wherewith he fronts the gate:Yet not unheralded he takes his standBefore the portal; on his brazen shield,The rounded screen and shelter of his form,I saw him show the ravening Sphinx, the fiendThat shamed our city—how it glared and moved,Clamped on the buckler, wrought in high relief!And in its claws did a Cadmean bear—Nor heretofore, for any single prey,Sped she aloft, through such a storm of dartsAs now awaits her. So our foe is here—Like, as I deem, to ply no stinted tradeIn blood and broil, but traffick as is meetIn fierce exchange for his long wayfaring!ETEOCLES.Ah, may they meet the doom they think to bring—They and their impious vaunts—from those on high!So should they sink, hurled down to deepest death!This foe, at least, by thee Arcadian styled,Is faced by one who bears no braggart sign,But his hand sees to smite, where blows avail—Actor, own brother to Hyperbius!He will not let a boast without a blowStream through our gates and nourish our despair,Nor give him way who on his hostile shieldBears the brute image of the loathly Sphinx!Blocked at the gate, she will rebuke the manWho strives to thrust her forward, when she feelsThick crash of blows, up to the city wall.With Heaven’s goodwill, my forecast shall be true.CHORUS.Home to my heart the vaunting goes,And, quick with terror, on my headRises my hair, at sound of thoseWho wildly, impiously rave!If gods there be, to them I plead—Give them to darkness and the grave.THE SPY.Fronting the sixth gate stands another foe,Wisest of warriors, bravest among seers—Such must I name Amphiaraus: he,Set steadfast at the Homoloid gate,Berates strong Tydeus with reviling words—The man of blood, the bane of state and home,To Argos, arch-allurer to all ill,Evoker of the fury-fiend of hell,Death’s minister, and counsellor of wrongUnto Adrastus in this fatal field.Ay, and with eyes upturned and mien of scornHe chides thy brother Polynices tooAt his desert, and once and yet againDwells hard and meaningly upon his nameWhere it saithgloryyet importethfeud.Yea, such thou art in act, and such thy graceIn sight of Heaven, and such in aftertimeThy fame, for lips and ears of mortal men!“He strove to sack the city of his siresAnd temples of her gods, and brought on herAn alien armament of foreign foes.The fountain of maternal blood outpouredWhat power can staunch? even so, thy fatherlandOnce by thine ardent malice stormed and ta’en,Shall ne’er join force with thee.” For me, I knowIt doth remain to let my blood enrichThe border of this land that loves me not—Blood of a prophet, in a foreign grave!Now, for the battle! I foreknow my doom,Yet it shall be with honour. So he spake,The prophet, holding up his targe of bronzeWrought without blazon, to the ears of menWho stood around and heeded not his word.For on no bruit and rumour of great deeds,But on their doing, is his spirit set,And in his heart he reaps a furrow rich,Wherefrom the foison of good counsel springs.Against him, send brave heart and hand of might,For the god-lover is man’s fiercest foe.ETEOCLES.Out on the chance that couples mortal men,Linking the just and impious in one!In every issue, the one curse is this—Companionship with men of evil heart!A baneful harvest, let none gather it!The field of sin is rank, and brings forth deathAt whiles a righteous man who goes aboardWith reckless mates, a horde of villainy,Dies by one death with that detested crew;At whiles the just man, joined with citizensRuthless to strangers, recking nought of Heaven,Trapped, against nature, in one net with them,Dies by God’s thrust and all-including blow.So will this prophet die, even Oecleus’ child,Sage, just, and brave, and loyal towards Heaven,Potent in prophecy, but mated hereWith men of sin, too boastful to be wise!Long is their road, and they return no more,And, at their taking-off, by hand of Zeus,The prophet too shall take the downward way.He will not—so I deem—assail the gate—Not as through cowardice or feeble will,But as one knowing to what end shall beTheir struggle in the battle, if indeedFruit of fulfilment lie in Loxias’ word.He speaketh not, unless to speak avails!Yet, for more surety, we will post a man,Strong Lasthenes, as warder of the gate,Stern to the foeman; he hath age’s skill,Mated with youthful vigour, and an eyeForward, alert; swift too his hand, to catchThe fenceless interval ’twixt shield and spear!Yet man’s good fortune lies in hand of Heaven.CHORUS.Unto our loyal cry, ye gods, give ear!Save, save the city! turn away the spear,Send on the foemen fear!Outside the rampart fall they, rent and rivenBeneath the bolt of heaven!THE SPY.Last, let me name yon seventh antagonist,Thy brother’s self, at the seventh portal set—Hear with what wrath he imprecates our doom,Vowing to mount the wall, though banished hence,And peal aloud the wild exulting cry—The town is ta’en—then clash his sword with thine,Giving and taking death in close embrace,Or, if thou ’scapest, flinging upon thee,As robber of his honour and his home,The doom of exile such as he has borne.So clamours he and so invokes the godsWho guard his race and home, to hear and heedThe curse that sounds in Polynices’ name!He bears a round shield, fresh from forge and fire,And wrought upon it is a twofold sign—For lo, a woman leads decorouslyThe figure of a warrior wrought in gold;And thus the legend runs—I Justice am,And I will bring the hero home again,To hold once more his place within this town,Once more to pace his sire’s ancestral hall.Such are the symbols, by our foemen shown—Now make thine own decision, whom to sendAgainst this last opponent! I have said—Nor canst thou in my tidings find a flaw—Thine is it, now, to steer the course aright.ETEOCLES.Ah me, the madman, and the curse of Heaven!And woe for us, the lamentable lineOf Oedipus, and woe that in this houseOur father’s curse must find accomplishment!But now, a truce to tears and loud lament,Lest they should breed a still more rueful wail!As for this Polynices, named too well,Soon shall we know how his device shall end—Whether the gold-wrought symbols on his shield,In their mad vaunting and bewildered pride,Shall guide him as a victor to his home!For had but Justice, maiden-child of Zeus,Stood by his act and thought, it might have been!Yet never, from the day he reached the lightOut of the darkness of his mother’s womb,Never in childhood, nor in youthful prime,Nor when his chin was gathering its beard,Hath Justice hailed or claimed him as her own.Therefore I deem not that she standeth nowTo aid him in this outrage on his home!Misnamed, in truth, were Justice, utterly,If to impiety she lent her hand.Sure in this faith, I will myself go forthAnd match me with him; who hath fairer claim?Ruler, against one fain to snatch the rule,Brother with brother matched, and foe with foe,Will I confront the issue. To the wall!CHORUS.O thou true heart, O child of Oedipus,Be not, in wrath, too like the man whose nameMurmurs an evil omen! ’Tis enoughThat Cadmus’ clan should strive with Argos’ host,For blood there is that can atone that stain!But—brother upon brother dealing death—Not time itself can expiate the sin!ETEOCLES.If man find hurt, yet clasp his honour still,’Tis well; the dead have honour, nought beside.Hurt, with dishonour, wins no word of praise!CHORUS.Ah, what is thy desire?Let not the lust and ravin of the swordBear thee adown the tide accursed, abhorred!Fling off thy passion’s rage, thy spirit’s prompting dire!ETEOCLES.Nay—since the god is urgent for our doom,Let Laius’ house, by Phoebus loathed and scorned,Follow the gale of destiny, and winIts great inheritance, the gulf of hell!CHORUS.Ruthless thy craving is—Craving for kindred and forbidden bloodTo be outpoured—a sacrifice imbruedWith sin, a bitter fruit of murderous enmities!ETEOCLES.Yea, my own father’s fateful Curse proclaims—A ghastly presence, and her eyes are dry—Strike! honour is the prize, not life prolonged!CHORUS.Ah, be not urged of her! for none shall dareTo call theecoward, in thy throned estate!Will not the Fury in her sable pallPass outward from these halls, what time the godsWelcome a votive offering from our hands?ETEOCLES.The gods! long since they hold us in contempt,Scornful of gifts thus offered by the lost!Why should we fawn and flinch away from doom?CHORUS.Now, when it stands beside thee! for its powerMay, with a changing gust of milder mood,Temper the blast that bloweth wild and rudeAnd frenzied, in this hour!ETEOCLES.Ay, kindled by the curse of Oedipus—All too prophetic, out of dreamland cameThe vision, meting out our sire’s estate!CHORUS.Heed women’s voices, though thou love them not!ETEOCLES.Say aught that may avail, but stint thy words.CHORUS.Go not thou forth to guard the seventh gate!ETEOCLES.Words shall not blunt the edge of my resolve.CHORUS.Yet the god loves to let the weak prevail.ETEOCLES.That to a swordsman, is no welcome word!CHORUS.Shall thine own brother’s blood be victory’s palm?ETEOCLES.Ill which the gods have sent thou canst not shun![ExitETEOCLES.]CHORUS.I shudder in dread of the power, abhorred by the gods of high heaven,The ruinous curse of the home till roof-tree and rafter be riven!Too true are the visions of ill, too true the fulfilment they bringTo the curse that was spoken of old by the frenzy and wrath of the king!Her will is the doom of the children, and Discord is kindled amain,And strange is the Lord of Division, who cleaveth the birthright in twain,—The edged thing, born of the north, the steel that is ruthless and keen,Dividing in bitter division the lot of the children of teen!Not the wide lowland around, the realm of their sire, shall they have,Yet enough for the dead to inherit, the pitiful space of a grave!Ah, but when kin meets kin, when sire and child,Unknowing, are defiledBy shedding common blood, and when the pitOf death devoureth it,Drinking the clotted stain, the gory dye—Who, who can purify?Who cleanse pollution, where the ancient baneRises and reeks again?Whilome in olden days the sin was wrought,And swift requital brought—Yea on the children of the child came stillNew heritage of ill!For thrice Apollo spoke this word divine,From Delphi’s central shrine,To Laius—Die thou childless!thus aloneCan the land’s weal be won!But vainly with his wife’s desire he strove,And gave himself to love,Begetting Oedipus, by whom he died,The fateful parricide!The sacred seed-plot, his own mother’s womb,He sowed, his house’s doom,A root of blood! by frenzy lured, they cameUnto their wedded shame.And now the waxing surge, the wave of fate,Rolls on them, triply great—One billow sinks, the next towers, high and dark,Above our city’s bark—Only the narrow barrier of the wallTotters, as soon to fall;And, if our chieftains in the storm go down,What chance can save the town?Curses, inherited from long ago,Bring heavy freight of woe:Rich stores of merchandise o’erload the deck,Near, nearer comes the wreck—And all is lost, cast out upon the wave,Floating, with none to save!Whom did the gods, whom did the chief of men,Whom did each citizenIn crowded concourse, in such honour hold,As Oedipus of old,When the grim fiend, that fed on human prey,He took from us away?But when, in the fulness of days, he knew of his bridal unblest,A twofold horror he wrought, in the frenzied despair of his breast—Debarred from the grace of the banquet, the service of goblets of gold,He flung on his children a curse for the splendour they dared to withhold,A curse prophetic and bitter—The glory of wealth and of pride,With iron, not gold, in your hands, ye shall come, at the last, to divide!Behold, how a shudder runs through me, lest now, in the fulness of time,The house-fiend awake and return, to mete out the measure of crime!EnterTHE SPY.THE SPY.Take heart, ye daughters whom your mothers’ milkMade milky-hearted! lo, our city stands,Saved from the yoke of servitude: the vauntsOf overweening men are silent now,And the State sails beneath a sky serene,Nor in the manifold and battering wavesHath shipped a single surge, and solid standsThe rampart, and the gates are made secure,Each with a single champion’s trusty guard.So in the main and at six gates we holdA victory assured; but, at the seventh,The god that on the seventh day was born,Royal Apollo, hath ta’en up his restTo wreak upon the sons of OedipusTheir grandsire’s wilfulness of long ago.CHORUS.What further woefulness besets our home?THE SPY.The home stands safe—but ah, the princes twain—CHORUS.Who? what of them? I am distraught with fear.THE SPY.Hear now, and mark! the sons of Oedipus—CHORUS.Ah, my prophetic soul! I feel their doom.THE SPY.Have done with questions!—with their lives crushed out—CHORUS.Lie they out yonder? the full horror speak!Did hands meet hands more close than brotherly?Came fate on each, and in the selfsame hour?THE SPY.Yea, blotting out the lineage ill-starred!Now mix your exultation and your tears,Over a city saved, the while its lords,Twin leaders of the fight, have parcelled outWith forged arbitrament of Scythian steelThe full division of their fatherland,And, as their father’s imprecation bade,Shall have their due of land, a twofold grave.So is the city saved; the earth has drunkBlood of twin princes, by each other slain.CHORUS.O mighty Zeus and guardian powers,The strength and stay of Cadmus’ towers!Shall I send forth a joyous cry,Hail to the lord of weal renewed?Or weep the misbegotten twain,Born to a fatal destiny?Each numbered now among the slain,Each dying in ill fortitude,Eachtruly named, eachchild of feud?O dark and all-prevailing ill,That broods o’er Oedipus and all his line,Numbing my heart with mortal chill!Ah me, this song of mine,Which, Thyad-like, I woke, now falleth still,Or only tells of doom,And echoes round a tomb!Dead are they, dead! in their own blood they lie—Ill-omened the concent that hails our victory!The curse a father on his children spakeHath faltered not, nor failed!Nought, Laius! thy stubborn choice availed—First to beget, then, in the after dayAnd for the city’s sake,The child to slay!For nought can blunt nor marThe speech oracular!Children of teen! by disbelief ye erred—Yet in wild weeping came fulfilment of the word!ANTIGONEandISMENEapproach with a train of mourners, bearing the bodies ofETEOCLESandPOLYNICES.Look up, look forth! the doom is plain,Nor spake the messenger in vain!A twofold sorrow, twofold strife—Each brave against a brother’s life!In double doom hath sorrow come—How shall I speak it?—on the home!Alas, my sisters! be your sighs the gale,The smiting of your brows the plash of oars,Wafting the boat, to Acheron’s dim shoresThat passeth ever, with its darkened sail,On its uncharted voyage and sunless way,Far from thy beams, Apollo, god of day—The melancholy barkBound for the common bourn, the harbour of the dark!Look up, look yonder! from the homeAntigone, Ismene come,On the last, saddest errand bound,To chant a dirge of doleful sound,With agony of equal painAbove their brethren slain!Their sister-bosoms surely swell,Heart with rent heart according wellIn grief for those who fought and fell!Yet—ere they utter forth their woe—We must awake the rueful strainTo vengeful powers, in realms below,And mourn hell’s triumph o’er the slain!Alas! of all, the breast who bind,—Yea, all the race of womankind—O maidens, ye are most bereaved!For you, for you the tear-drops start—Deem that in truth, and undeceived,Ye hear the sorrows of my heart!(To the dead.)Children of bitterness, and sternly brave—One, proud of heart against persuasion’s voice,One, against exile proof! ye win your choice—Each in your fatherland, a separate grave!Alack, on house and heritageThey brought a baneful doom, and death for wage!One strove through tottering walls to force his way,One claimed, in bitter arrogance, the sway,And both alike, even now and here,Have closed their suit, with steel for arbiter!And lo, the Fury-fiend of Oedipus, their sire,Hath brought his curse to consummation dire!Each in the left side smitten, see them laid—The children of one womb,Slain by a mutual doom!Alas, their fate! the combat murderous,The horror of the house,The curse of ancient bloodshed, now repaid!Yea, deep and to the heart the deathblow fell,Edged by their feud ineffable—By the grim curse, their sire did imprecate—Discord and deadly hate!Hark, how the city and its towers make moan—How the land mourns that held them for its own!Fierce greed and fell division did they blend,Till death made end!They strove to part the heritage in twain,Giving to each a gain—Yet that which struck the balance in the strife,The arbitrating sword,By those who loved the twain is held abhorred—Loathed is the god of death, who sundered each from life!Here, by the stroke of steel, behold! they lie—And rightly may we cryBeside their fathers, let them here be laid—Iron gave their doom, with iron their graves be made—Alack, the slaying sword, alack, th’ entombing spade!Alas, a piercing shriek, a rending groan,A cry unfeigned of sorrow felt at heart!With shuddering of grief, with tears that start,With wailful escort, let them hither come—For one or other make divided moan!No light lament of pity mixed with gladness,But with true tears, poured from the soul of sadness,Over the princes dead and their bereavèd homeSay we, above these brethren dead,On citizen, on foreign foe,Brave was their rush, and stern their blow—Now, lowly are they laid!Beyond all women upon earthWoe, woe for her who gave them birth!Unknowingly, her son she wed—The children of that marriage-bed,Each in the self-same womb, were bred—Each by a brother’s hand lies dead!Yea, from one seed they sprang, and by one fateTheir heritage is desolate,The heart’s division sundered claim from claim,And, from their feud, death came!Now is their hate allayed,Now is their life-stream shed,Ensanguining the earth with crimson dye—Lo, from one blood they sprang, and in one blood they lie!A grievous arbiter was given the twain—The stranger from the northern main,The sharp, dividing sword,Fresh from the forge and fireThe War-god treacherous gave ill awardAnd brought their father’s curse to a fulfilment dire!They have their portion—each his lot and doom,Given from the gods on high!Yea, the piled wealth of fatherland, for tomb,Shall underneath them lie!Alas, alas! with flowers of fame and prideYour home ye glorified;But, in the end, the Furies gathered roundWith chants of boding sound,Shrieking,In wild defeat and disarray,Behold, ye pass away!The sign of Ruin standeth at the gate,There, where they strove with Fate—And the ill power beheld the brothers’ fall,And triumphed over all!ANTIGONE, ISMENE,andCHORUS(Processional Chant)Thou wert smitten, in smiting,Thou didst slay, and wert slain—By the spear of each otherYe lie on the plain,And ruthless the deed that ye wrought was, and ruthless the death of the twain!Take voice, O my sorrow!Flow tear upon tear—Lay the slain by the slayer,Made one on the bier!Our soul in distraction is lost, and we mourn o’er the prey of the spear!Ah, woe for your ending,Unbrotherly wrought!And woe for the issue,The fray that ye fought,The doom of a mutual slaughter whereby to the grave ye are brought!Ah, twofold the sorrow—The heard and the seen!And double the tideOf our tears and our teen,As we stand by our brothers in death and wail for the love that has been!O grievous the fateThat attends upon wrong!Stern ghost of our sire,Thy vengeance is long!Dark Fury of hell and of death, the hands of thy kingdom are strong!O dark were the sorrowsThat exile hath known!He slew, but returned notAlive to his own!He struck down a brother, but fell, in the moment of triumph hewn down!O lineage accurst,O doom and despair!Alas, for their quarrel,The brothers that were!And woe! for their pitiful end, who once were our love and our care!O grievous the fateThat attends upon wrong!Stern ghost of our sire,Thy vengeance is long!Dark Fury of hell and of death, the hands of thy kingdom are strong!By proof have ye learnt it!At once and as one,O brothers beloved,To death ye were done!Ye came to the strife of the sword, and behold! ye are both overthrown!O grievous the tale is,And grievous their fall,To the house, to the land,And to me above all!Ah God! for the curse that hath come, the sin and the ruin withal!O children distraught,Who in madness have died!Shall ye rest with old kingsIn the place of their pride?Alas for the wrath of your sire if he findeth you laid by his side!Enter aHERALD.HERALD.I bear command to tell to one and allWhat hath approved itself and now is law,Ruled by the counsellors of Cadmus’ town.For this Eteocles, it is resolvedTo lay him on his earth-bed, in this soil,Not without care and kindly sepulture.For why? he hated those who hated us,And, with all duties blamelessly performedUnto the sacred ritual of his sires,He met such end as gains our city’s grace,—With auspices that do ennoble death.Such words I have in charge to speak of him:But of his brother Polynices, this—Be he cast out unburied, for the dogsTo rend and tear: for he presumed to wasteThe land of the Cadmeans, had not Heaven—Some god of those who aid our fatherland—Opposed his onset, by his brother’s spear,To whom, tho’ dead, shall consecration come!Against him stood this wretch, and brought a hordeOf foreign foemen, to beset our town.He therefore shall receive his recompense,Buried ignobly in the maw of kites—No women-wailers to escort his corpseNor pile his tomb nor shrill his dirge anew—Unhouselled, unattended, cast away!So, for these brothers, doth our State ordain.ANTIGONE.And I—to those who make such claims of ruleIn Cadmus’ town—I, though no other help,(Pointing to the body ofPOLYNICES)I, I will bury this my brother’s corseAnd risk your wrath and what may come of it!It shames me not to face the State, and setWill against power, rebellion resolute:Deep in my heart is set my sisterhood,My common birthright with my brothers, bornAll of one womb, her children who, for woe,Brought forth sad offspring to a sire ill-starred.Therefore, my soul! take thou thy willing share,In aid of him who now can will no more,Against this outrage: be a sister true,While yet thou livest, to a brother dead!Him never shall the wolves with ravening mawRend and devour: I do forbid the thought!I for him, I—albeit a woman weak—In place of burial-pit, will give him restBy this protecting handful of light dustWhich, in the lap of this poor linen robe,I bear to hallow and bestrew his corpseWith the due covering. Let none gainsay!Courage and craft shall arm me, this to do.HERALD.I charge thee, not to flout the city’s law!ANTIGONE.I charge thee, use no useless heralding!HERALD.Stern is a people newly ’scaped from death.ANTIGONE.Whet thou their sternness! Burial he shall have.HERALD.How? Grace of burial, to the city’s foe?ANTIGONE.God hath not judged him separate in guilt.HERALD.True—till he put this land in jeopardy.ANTIGONE.His rights usurped, he answered wrong with wrong.HERALD.Nay—but for one man’s sin he smote the State.ANTIGONE.Contention doth out-talk all other gods! Prate thou no more—I will to bury him.HERALD.Will, an thou wilt! but I forbid the deed.[Exit theHERALD.]CHORUS.Exulting Fates, who waste the lineAnd whelm the house of Oedipus!Fiends, who have slain, in wrath condign,The father and the children thus!What now befits it that I do,What meditate, what undergo?Can I the funeral rite refrain,Nor weep for Polynices slain?But yet, with fear I shrink and thrill,Presageful of the city’s will!Thou, O Eteocles, shalt haveFull rites, and mourners at thy grave,But he, thy brother slain, shall he,With none to weep or cryAlas,To unbefriended burial pass?Only one sister o’er his bier,To raise the cry and pour the tear—Who can obey such stern decree?SEMI-CHORUS.Let those who hold our city’s swayWreak, or forbear to wreak, their willOn those who cry,Ah, well-a-day!Lamenting Polynices still!We will go forth and, side by sideWith her, due burial will provide!Royal he was; to him be paidOur grief, wherever he be laid!The crowd may sway, and change, and stillTake its caprice for Justice’ will!But we this dead Eteocles,As Justice wills and Right decrees,Will bear unto his grave!For—under those enthroned on highAnd Zeus’ eternal royalty—He unto us salvation gave!He saved us from a foreign yoke,—A wild assault of outland folk,A savage, alien wave![Exeunt.]

Laius, king of the Cadmeans, was warned by the oracle of Delphi that he should not beget a child. But he disobeyed this command, and when a son was born to him, he cast the child away, that he might perish on Cithaeron. But a herdsman found the babe yet alive, and he was nourished in Corinth and grew to manhood, not knowing his true parentage, and was named Oedipus; and he slew, unknowingly, his father, Laius, and afterwards saved the town of the Cadmeans from a devouring monster, and married the widowed queen, Iocaste, and begat sons and daughters. But when he learned what he had wrought unwittingly, he fell into despair, and the queen slew herself. But before Oedipus died, he laid a curse upon his male children, Eteocles and Polynices, that they should make even division of the kingdom by the sword; and it fell out even so, for the two brothers strove together for the inheritance, and Polynices brought an army, from Argos, against Eteocles; and the brothers fought, and fell each by the other’s hand, and the curse was fulfilled.

ETEOCLES.A SPY.CHORUS OF CADMEAN MAIDENS.ANTIGONE.ISMENE.A HERALD.

ETEOCLES.Clansmen of Cadmus, at the signal givenBy time and season must the ruler speakWho sets the course and steers the ship of StateWith hand upon the tiller, and with eyeWatchful against the treachery of sleep.For if all go aright,thank Heaven, men say,But if adversely—which may God forefend!—One name on many lips, from street to street,Would bear the bruit and rumour of the time,Down with Eteocles!—a clamorous curse,A dirge of ruin. May averting ZeusMake good his title here, in Cadmus’ hold!You it beseems now boys unripened yetTo lusty manhood, men gone past the primeAnd increase of the full begetting seed,And those whom youth and manhood well combinedArray for action—all to rise in aidOf city, shrines, and altars of all powersWho guard our land; that ne’er, to end of time,Be blotted out the sacred service dueTo our sweet mother-land and to her brood.For she it was who to their guest-right calledYour waxing youth, was patient of the toil,And cherished you on the land’s gracious lap,Alike to plant the hearth and bear the shieldIn loyal service, for an hour like this.Mark now! until to-day, luck rules our scale;For we, though long beleaguered, in the mainHave with our sallies struck the foemen hard.But now the seer, the feeder of the birds,(Whose art unerring and prophetic skillOf ear and mind divines their utteranceWithout the lore of fire interpreted)Foretelleth, by the mastery of his art,That now an onset of Achaea’s hostIs by a council of the night designedTo fall in double strength upon our walls.Up and away, then, to the battlements,The gates, the bulwarks! don your panoplies,Array you at the breast-work, take your standOn floorings of the towers, and with good heartStand firm for sudden sallies at the gates,Nor hold too heinous a respect for hordesSent on you from afar: some god will guard!I too, for shrewd espial of their camp,Have sent forth scouts, and confidence is mineThey will not fail nor tremble at their task,And, with their news, I fear no foeman’s guile.

Enter aSPY.

THE SPY.Eteocles, high king of Cadmus’ folk,I stand here with news certified and sureFrom Argos’ camp, things by myself descried.Seven warriors yonder, doughty chiefs of might,Into the crimsoned concave of a shieldHave shed a bull’s blood, and, with hands immersedInto the gore of sacrifice, have swornBy Ares, lord of fight, and by thy name,Blood-lapping Terror,Let our oath be heard—Either to raze the walls, make void the holdOf Cadmus—strive his children as they may—Or, dying here, to make the foemen’s landWith blood impasted. Then, as memory’s giftUnto their parents at the far-off home,Chaplets they hung upon Adrastus’ car,With eyes tear-dropping, but no word of moan.For their steeled spirit glowed with high resolve,As lions pant, with battle in their eyes.For them, no weak alarm delays the clearIssues of death or life! I parted thenceEven as they cast the lots, how each should lead,Against which gate, his serried company.Rank then thy bravest, with what speed thou may’st,Hard by the gates, to dash on them, for now,Full-armed, the onward ranks of Argos come!The dust whirls up, and from their panting steedsWhite foamy flakes like snow bedew the plain.Thou therefore, chieftain! like a steersman skilled,Enshield the city’s bulwarks, ere the blastOf war comes darting on them! hark, the roarOf the great landstorm with its waves of men!Take Fortune by the forelock! for the rest,By yonder dawn-light will I scan the fieldClear and aright, and surety of my wordShall keep thee scatheless of the coming storm.

ETEOCLES.O Zeus and Earth and city-guarding gods,And thou, my father’s Curse, of baneful might,Spare ye at least this town, nor root it up,By violence of the foemen, stock and stem!For here, from home and hearth, rings Hellas’ tongue.Forbid that e’er the yoke of slaveryShould bow this land of freedom, Cadmus’ hold!Be ye her help! your cause I plead with mine—A city saved doth honour to her gods!

[ExitETEOCLES,etc.]

Enter theCHORUS OF MAIDENS.

CHORUS.I wail in the stress of my terror, and shrill is my cry of despair.The foemen roll forth from their camp as a billow, and onward they bear!Their horsemen are swift in the forefront, the dust rises up to the sky,A signal, though speechless, of doom, a herald more clear than a cry!Hoof-trampled, the land of my love bears onward the din to mine ears.As a torrent descending a mountain, it thunders and echoes and nears!The doom is unloosened and cometh! O kings and O queens of high Heaven,Prevail that it fall not upon us: the sign for their onset is given—They stream to the walls from without, white-shielded and keen for the fray.They storm to the citadel gates— what god or what goddess can stayThe rush of their feet? to what shrine shall I bow me in terror and pray?O gods high-throned in bliss, we must crouch at the shrines in your home!Not here must we tarry and wail: shield clashes on shield as they come—And now, even now is the hour for the robes and the chaplets of prayer!Mine eyes feel the flash of the sword, the clang is instinct with the spear!Is thy hand set against us, O Ares, in ruin and wrath to o’erwhelmThine own immemorial land, O god of the golden helm?Look down upon us, we beseech thee, on the land that thou lovest of old,And ye, O protecting gods, in pity your people behold!Yea, save us, the maidenly troop, from the doom and despair of the slave,For the crests of the foemen come onward, their rush is the rush of a waveRolled on by the war-god’s breath! almighty one, hear us and saveFrom the grasp of the Argives’ might! to the ramparts of Cadmus they crowd,And, clenched in the teeth of the steeds, the bits clink horror aloud!And seven high chieftains of war, with spear and with panoply bold,Are set, by the law of the lot, to storm the seven gates of our hold!Be near and befriend us, O Pallas, the Zeus-born maiden of might!O lord of the steed and the sea, be thy trident uplifted to smiteIn eager desire of the fray, Poseidon! and Ares come down,In fatherly presence revealed, to rescue Harmonia’s town!Thine too, Aphrodite, we are! thou art mother and queen of our race,To thee we cry out in our need, from thee let thy children have grace!Ye too, to scare back the foe, be your cry as a wolf’s howl wild,Thou, O the wolf-lord, and thou, of she-wolf Leto the child!Woe and alack for the sound, for the rattle of cars to the wall,And the creak of the grinding axles! O Hera, to thee is our call!Artemis, maiden beloved! the air is distraught with the spears,And whither doth destiny drive us, and where is the goal of our fears?The blast of the terrible stones on the ridge of our wall is not stayed,At the gates is the brazen clash of the bucklers—Apollo to aid!Thou too, O daughter of Zeus, who guidest the wavering frayTo the holy decision of fate, Athena! be with us to-day!Come down to the sevenfold gates and harry the foemen away!O gods and O sisters of gods, our bulwark and guard! we beseechThat ye give not our war-worn hold to a rabble of alien speech!List to the call of the maidens, the hands held up for the right,Be near us, protect us, and show that the city is dear in your sight!Have heed for her sacrifice holy, and thought of her offerings take,Forget not her love and her worship, be near her and smite for her sake!

Re-enterETEOCLES.

ETEOCLESHark to my question, things detestable!Is this aright and for the city’s weal,And helpful to our army thus beset,That ye before the statues of our godsShould fling yourselves, and scream and shriek your fears?Immodest, uncontrolled! Be this my lot—Never in troublous nor in peaceful daysTo dwell with aught that wears a female form!Where womankind has power, no man can house,Where womankind feeds panic, ruin rulesAlike in house and city! Look you now—Your flying feet, and rumour of your fears,Have spread a soulless panic on our walls,And they without do go from strength to strength,And we within make breach upon ourselves!Such fate it brings, to house with womankind.Therefore if any shall resist my rule—Or man, or woman, or some sexless thing—The vote of sentence shall decide their doom,And stones of execution, past escape,Shall finish all. Let not a woman’s voiceBe loud in council! for the things without,A man must care; let women keep within—Even then is mischief all too probable!Hear ye? or speak I to unheeding ears?

CHORUS.Ah, but I shudder, child of Oedipus!I heard the clash and clang!The axles rolled and rumbled; woe to usFire-welded bridles rang!

ETEOCLES.Say—when a ship is strained and deep in brine,Did e’er a seaman mend his chance, who leftThe helm, t’invoke the image at the prow?

CHORUS.Ah, but I fled to the shrines, I called to our helpers on high,When the stone-shower roared at the portals!I sped to the temples aloft, and loud was my call and my cry,Look down and deliver. Immortals!

ETEOCLES.Ay, pray amain that stone may vanquish steel!Were not that grace of gods? ay, ay—methinks,When cities fall, the gods go forth from them!

CHORUS.Ah, let me die, or ever I beholdThe gods go forth, in conflagration dire!The foemen’s rush and raid, and all our holdWrapt in the burning fire!

ETEOCLES.Cry not: on Heaven, in impotent debate!What saith the saw?—Good saving Strength, in verity,Out of Obedience breeds the babe Prosperity.

CHORUS.’Tis true: yet stronger is the power divine,And oft, when man’s estate is overbowedWith bitter pangs, disperses from his eyneThe heavy, hanging cloud!

ETEOCLES.Let men with sacrifice and auguryApproach the gods, when comes the tug of war;Maids must be silent and abide within.

CHORUS.By grace of the gods we hold it, a city untamed of the spear,And the battlement wards from the wall the foe and his aspect of fear!What need of displeasure herein?

ETEOCLES.Ay, pay thy vows to Heaven; I grudge them not,But—so thou strike no fear into our men—Have calm at heart, nor be too much afraid.

CHORUS.Alack, it is fresh in mine ears, the clamour and crash of the fray,And up to our holiest height I sped on my timorous way,Bewildered, beset by the din!

ETEOCLES.Now, if ye hear the bruit of death or wounds,Give not yourselves o’ermuch to shriek and scream,For Ares ravens upon human flesh.

CHORUS.Ah, but the snorting of the steeds I hear!

ETEOCLES.Then, if thou hearest, hear them not too well!

CHORUS.Hark, the earth rumbles, as they close us round!

ETEOCLES.Enough if I am here, with plans prepared.

CHORUS.Alack, the battering at the gates is loud!

ETEOCLES.Peace! stay your tongue, or else the town may hear!

CHORUS.O warders of the walls, betray them not!

ETEOCLES.Bestrew your cries! in silence face your fate.

CHORUS.Gods of our city, see me not enslaved!

ETEOCLES.On me, on all, thy cries bring slavery.

CHORUS.Zeus, strong to smite, turn upon foes thy blow!

ETEOCLES.Zeus, what a curse are women, wrought by thee!

CHORUS.Weak wretches, even as men, when cities fall.

ETEOCLES.What! clasping gods, yet voicing thy despair?

CHORUS.In the sick heart, fear machete prey of speech.

ETEOCLES.Light is the thing I ask thee—do my will!

CHORUS.Ask swiftly: swiftly shall I know my power.

ETEOCLES.Silence, weak wretch! nor put thy friends in fear.

CHORUS.I speak no more: the general fate be mine!

ETEOCLES.I take that word as wiser than the rest.Nay, more: these images possess thy will—Pray, in their strength, that Heaven be on our side!Then hear my prayers withal, and then ring outThe female triumph-note, thy privilege—Yea, utter forth the usage Hellas knows,The cry beside the altars, sounding clearEncouragement to friends, alarm to foes.But I unto all gods that guard our walls,Lords of the plain or warders of the martAnd to Isthmus’ stream and Dirge’s rills,I swear, if Fortune smiles and saves our town,That we will make our altars reek with bloodOf sheep and kine, shed forth unto the gods,And with victorious tokens front our fannies—Corsets and cases that once our foemen wore,Spear-shattered now—to deck these holy homes!Be such thy vows to Heaven—away with sighs,Away with outcry vain and barbarous,That shall avail not, in a general doom!But I will back, and, with six chosen menMyself the seventh, to confront the foeIn this great aspect of a poisèd war,Return and plant them at the sevenfold gates,Or e’er the prompt and clamorous battle-scoutsHaste to inflame our counsel with the need.

[ExitETEOCLES.]

CHORUS.I mark his words, yet, dark and deep,My heart’s alarm forbiddeth sleep!Close-clinging cares around my soulEnkindle fears beyond control,Presageful of what doom may fallFrom the great leaguer of the wall!So a poor dove is faint with fearFor her weak nestlings, while anewGlides on the snaky ravisher!In troop and squadron, hand on hand,They climb and throng, and hemmed we stand,While on the warders of our townThe flinty shower comes hurtling down!Gods born of Zeus! put forth your mightFor Cadmus’ city, realm, and right!What nobler land shall e’er be yours,If once ye give to hostile powersThe deep rich soil, and Dirce’s wave,The nursing stream, Poseidon gaveAnd Tethys’ children? Up and save!Cast on the ranks that hem us roundA deadly panic, make them flingTheir arms in terror on the ground,And die in carnage! thence shall springHigh honour for our clan and king!Come at our wailing cry, and standAs thronèd sentries of our land!For pity and sorrow it were that this immemorial townShould sink to be slave of the spear, to dust and to ashes gone down,By the gods of Achaean worship and arms of Achaean mightSacked and defiled and dishonoured, its women the prize of the fight—That, haled by the hair as a steed, their mantles dishevelled and torn,The maiden and matron alike should pass to the wedlock of scorn!I hear it arise from the city, the manifold wail of despair—Woe, woe for the doom that shall be—as in grasp of the foeman they fare!For a woe and a weeping it is, if the maiden inviolate flowerIs plucked by the foe in his might, not culled in the bridal bower!Alas for the hate and the horror—how say it?—less hateful by farIs the doom to be slain by the sword, hewn down in the carnage of war!For wide, ah! wide is the woe when the foeman has mounted the wall;There is havoc and terror and flame, and the dark smoke broods over all,And wild is the war-god’s breath, as in frenzy of conquest he springs,And pollutes with the blast of his lips the glory of holiest things!Up to the citadel rise clash and din,The war-net closes in,The spear is in the heart: with blood imbruedYoung mothers wail aloud,For children at their breast who scream and die!And boys and maidens fly,Yet scape not the pursuer, in his greedTo thrust and grasp and feed!Robber with robber joins, each calls his mateUnto the feast of hate—The banquet, lo! is spread—seize, rend, and tear!No need to choose or share!And all the wealth of earth to waste is poured—A sight by all abhorred!The grieving housewives eye it;heaped and blent,Earth’s boons are spoiled and spent,And waste to nothingness; and O alas,Young maids, forlorn ye pass—Fresh horror at your hearts—beneath the powerOf those who crop the flower!Ye own the ruffian ravisher for lord,And night brings rites abhorred!Woe, woe for you! upon your grief and painThere comes a fouler stain.

Enter on one sideTHE SPY;on the otherETEOCLESand theSIX CHAMPIONS.

SEMI-CHORUS.Look, friends! methinks the scout, who parted henceTo spy upon the foemen, comes with news,His feet as swift as wafting chariot-wheels.

SEMI-CHORUS.Ay, and our king, the son of Oedipus,Comes prompt to time, to learn the spy’s report—His heart is fainter than his foot is fast!

THE SPY.Well have I scanned the foe, and well can sayUnto which chief, by lot, each gate is given.Tydeus already with his onset-cryStorms at the gate called Proetides; but himThe seer Amphiaraus holds at halt,Nor wills that he should cross Ismenus’ ford,Until the sacrifices promise fair.But Tydeus, mad with lust of blood and broil,Like to a cockatrice at noontide hour,Hisses out wrath and smites with scourge of tongueThe prophet-son of Oecleus—Wise thou art,Faint against war, and holding back from death!With such revilings loud upon his lipsHe waves the triple plumes that o’er his helmFloat overshadowing, as a courser’s mane;And at his shield’s rim, terror in their tone,Clang and reverberate the brazen bells.And this proud sign, wrought on his shield, he bears—The vault of heaven, inlaid with blazing stars;And, for the boss, the bright moon glows at full,The eye of night, the first and lordliest star.Thus with high-vaunted armour, madly bold,He clamours by the stream-bank, wild for war,As a steed panting grimly on his bit,Held in and chafing for the trumpet’s bray!Whom wilt thou set against him? when the gatesOf Proetus yield, who can his rush repel?

ETEOCLES.To me, no blazon on a foeman’s shieldShall e’er present a fear! such pointed threatsAre powerless to wound; his plumes and bells,Without a spear, are snakes without a sting.Nay, more—that pageant of which thou tellest—The nightly sky displayed, ablaze with stars,Upon his shield, palters with double sense—One headstrong fool will find its truth anon!For, if night fall upon his eyes in death,Yon vaunting blazon will its own truth prove,And he is prophet of his folly’s fall.Mine shall it be, to pit against his powerThe loyal son of Astacus, as guardTo hold the gateways—a right valiant soul,Who has in heed the throne of ModestyAnd loathes the speech of Pride, and evermoreShrinks from the base, but knows no other fear.He springs by stock from those whom Ares spared,The men called Sown, a right son of the soil,And Melanippus styled. Now, what his armTo-day shall do, rests with the dice of war,And Ares shall ordain it; but his causeHath the true badge of Right, to urge him onTo guard, as son, his motherland from wrong.

CHORUS.Then may the gods give fortune fairUnto our chief, sent forth to dareWar’s terrible arbitrament!But ah! when champions wend away,I shudder, lest, from out the fray,Only their blood-stained wrecks be sent!

THE SPY.Nay, let him pass, and the gods’ help be his!Next, Capaneus comes on, by lot to leadThe onset at the gates Electran styled:A giant he, more huge than Tydeus’ self,And more than human in his arrogance—May fate forefend his threat against our walls!God willing, or unwilling—such his vaunt—I will lay waste this city; Pallas’ self,Zeus’ warrior maid, although she swoop to earthAnd plant her in my path, shall stay me not.And, for the flashes of the levin-bolt,He holds them harmless as the noontide rays.Mark, too, the symbol on his shield—a manScornfully weaponless but torch in hand,And the flame glows within his grasp, preparedFor ravin: lo, the legend, wrought in words,Fire for the city bring I, flares in gold!Against such wight, send forth—yet whom? what manWill front that vaunting figure and not fear?

ETEOCLES.Aha, this profits also, gain on gain!In sooth, for mortals, the tongue’s utteranceBewrays unerringly a foolish pride!Hither stalks Capaneus, with vaunt and threatDefying god-like powers, equipt to act,And, mortal though he be, he strains his tongueIn folly’s ecstasy, and casts aloftHigh swelling words against the ears of Zeus.Right well I trust—if justice grants the word—That, by the might of Zeus, a bolt of flameIn more than semblance shall descend on him.Against his vaunts, though reckless, I have set,To make assurance sure, a warrior stern—Strong Polyphontes, fervid for the fray;A sturdy bulwark, he, by grace of HeavenAnd favour of his champion Artemis!Say on, who holdeth the next gate in ward?

CHORUS.Perish the wretch whose vaunt affronts our home!On him the red bolt come,Ere to the maiden bowers his way he cleave,To ravage and bereave!

THE SPY.I will say on. Eteoclus is third—To him it fell, what time the third lot sprangO’er the inverted helmet’s brazen rim,To dash his stormers on Neistae gate.He wheels his mares, who at their frontlets chafeAnd yearn to charge upon the gates amain.They snort the breath of pride, and, filled therewith,Their nozzles whistle with barbaric sound.High too and haughty is his shield’s device—An armèd man who climbs, from rung to rung,A scaling ladder, up a hostile wall,Afire to sack and slay; and he too cries,(By letters, full of sound, upon the shield)Not Ares’ self shall cast me from the wall.Look to it, send, against this man, a manStrong to debar the slave’s yoke from our town.

ETEOCLES (pointing toMEGAREUS)Send will I—even this man, with luck to aid—By his worth sent already, not by prideAnd vain pretence, is he. ’Tis Megareus,The child of Creon, of the Earth-sprung born!He will not shrink from guarding of the gates,Nor fear the maddened charger’s frenzied neigh,But, if he dies, will nobly quit the scoreFor nurture to the land that gave him birth,Or from the shield-side hew two warriors downEteoclus and the figure that he lifts—Ay, and the city pictured, all in one,And deck with spoils the temple of his sire!Announce the next pair, stint not of thy tongue!

CHORUS.O thou, the warder of my home,Grant, unto us, Fate’s favouring tide,Send on the foemen doom!They fling forth taunts of frenzied pride,On them may Zeus with glare of vengeance come;

THE SPY.Lo, next him stands a fourth and shouts amain,By Pallas Onca’s portal, and displaysA different challenge; ’tis Hippomedon!Huge the device that starts up from his targeIn high relief; and, I deny it not,I shuddered, seeing how, upon the rim,It made a mighty circle round the shield—No sorry craftsman he, who wrought that workAnd clamped it all around the buckler’s edge!The form was Typhon: from his glowing throatRolled lurid smoke, spark-litten, kin of fire!The flattened edge-work, circling round the whole,Made strong support for coiling snakes that grewErect above the concave of the shield:Loud rang the warrior’s voice; inspired for war,He raves to slay, as doth a Bacchanal,His very glance a terror! of such wightBeware the onset! closing on the gates,He peals his vaunting and appalling cry!

ETEOCLES.Yet first our Pallas Onca—wardress she,Planting her foot hard by her gate—shall stand,The Maid against the ruffian, and repelHis force, as from her brood the mother-birdBeats back the wintered serpent’s venom’d fangAnd next, by her, is Oenops’ gallant son,Hyperbius, chosen to confront this foe,Ready to seek his fate at Fortune’s shrine!In form, in valour, and in skill of arms,None shall gainsay him. See how wisely wellHermes hath set the brave against the strong!Confronted shall they stand, the shield of eachBearing the image of opposing gods:One holds aloft his Typhon breathing fire,But, on the other’s shield, in symbol sitsZeus, calm and strong, and fans his bolt to flame—Zeus, seen of all, yet seen of none to fail!Howbeit, weak is trust reposed in Heaven—Yet are we upon Zeus’ victorious side,The foe, with those he worsted—if in soothZeus against Typhon held the upper hand,And if Hyperbius, (as well may hapWhen two such foes such diverse emblems bear)Have Zeus upon his shield, a saving sign.

CHORUS.High faith is mine that he whose shieldBears, against Zeus, the thing of hate.The giant Typhon, thus revealed,A monster loathed of gods eterneAnd mortal men—this doom shall earnA shattered skull, before the gate!

THE SPY.Heaven send it so!A fifth assailant nowIs set against our fifth, the northern, gate,Fronting the death-mound where Amphion liesThe child of Zeus.This foeman vows his faith,Upon a mystic spear-head which he deemsMore holy than a godhead and more sureTo find its mark than any glance of eye,That, will they, nill they, he will storm and sackThe hold of the Cadmeans. Such his oath—His, the bold warrior, yet of childish years,A bud of beauty’s foremost flower, the sonOf Zeus and of the mountain maid. I markHow the soft down is waxing on his cheek,Thick and close-growing in its tender prime—In name, not mood, is he a maiden’s child—Parthenopaeus; large and bright his eyesBut fierce the wrath wherewith he fronts the gate:Yet not unheralded he takes his standBefore the portal; on his brazen shield,The rounded screen and shelter of his form,I saw him show the ravening Sphinx, the fiendThat shamed our city—how it glared and moved,Clamped on the buckler, wrought in high relief!And in its claws did a Cadmean bear—Nor heretofore, for any single prey,Sped she aloft, through such a storm of dartsAs now awaits her. So our foe is here—Like, as I deem, to ply no stinted tradeIn blood and broil, but traffick as is meetIn fierce exchange for his long wayfaring!

ETEOCLES.Ah, may they meet the doom they think to bring—They and their impious vaunts—from those on high!So should they sink, hurled down to deepest death!This foe, at least, by thee Arcadian styled,Is faced by one who bears no braggart sign,But his hand sees to smite, where blows avail—Actor, own brother to Hyperbius!He will not let a boast without a blowStream through our gates and nourish our despair,Nor give him way who on his hostile shieldBears the brute image of the loathly Sphinx!Blocked at the gate, she will rebuke the manWho strives to thrust her forward, when she feelsThick crash of blows, up to the city wall.With Heaven’s goodwill, my forecast shall be true.

CHORUS.Home to my heart the vaunting goes,And, quick with terror, on my headRises my hair, at sound of thoseWho wildly, impiously rave!If gods there be, to them I plead—Give them to darkness and the grave.

THE SPY.Fronting the sixth gate stands another foe,Wisest of warriors, bravest among seers—Such must I name Amphiaraus: he,Set steadfast at the Homoloid gate,Berates strong Tydeus with reviling words—The man of blood, the bane of state and home,To Argos, arch-allurer to all ill,Evoker of the fury-fiend of hell,Death’s minister, and counsellor of wrongUnto Adrastus in this fatal field.Ay, and with eyes upturned and mien of scornHe chides thy brother Polynices tooAt his desert, and once and yet againDwells hard and meaningly upon his nameWhere it saithgloryyet importethfeud.Yea, such thou art in act, and such thy graceIn sight of Heaven, and such in aftertimeThy fame, for lips and ears of mortal men!“He strove to sack the city of his siresAnd temples of her gods, and brought on herAn alien armament of foreign foes.The fountain of maternal blood outpouredWhat power can staunch? even so, thy fatherlandOnce by thine ardent malice stormed and ta’en,Shall ne’er join force with thee.” For me, I knowIt doth remain to let my blood enrichThe border of this land that loves me not—Blood of a prophet, in a foreign grave!Now, for the battle! I foreknow my doom,Yet it shall be with honour. So he spake,The prophet, holding up his targe of bronzeWrought without blazon, to the ears of menWho stood around and heeded not his word.For on no bruit and rumour of great deeds,But on their doing, is his spirit set,And in his heart he reaps a furrow rich,Wherefrom the foison of good counsel springs.Against him, send brave heart and hand of might,For the god-lover is man’s fiercest foe.

ETEOCLES.Out on the chance that couples mortal men,Linking the just and impious in one!In every issue, the one curse is this—Companionship with men of evil heart!A baneful harvest, let none gather it!The field of sin is rank, and brings forth deathAt whiles a righteous man who goes aboardWith reckless mates, a horde of villainy,Dies by one death with that detested crew;At whiles the just man, joined with citizensRuthless to strangers, recking nought of Heaven,Trapped, against nature, in one net with them,Dies by God’s thrust and all-including blow.So will this prophet die, even Oecleus’ child,Sage, just, and brave, and loyal towards Heaven,Potent in prophecy, but mated hereWith men of sin, too boastful to be wise!Long is their road, and they return no more,And, at their taking-off, by hand of Zeus,The prophet too shall take the downward way.He will not—so I deem—assail the gate—Not as through cowardice or feeble will,But as one knowing to what end shall beTheir struggle in the battle, if indeedFruit of fulfilment lie in Loxias’ word.He speaketh not, unless to speak avails!Yet, for more surety, we will post a man,Strong Lasthenes, as warder of the gate,Stern to the foeman; he hath age’s skill,Mated with youthful vigour, and an eyeForward, alert; swift too his hand, to catchThe fenceless interval ’twixt shield and spear!Yet man’s good fortune lies in hand of Heaven.

CHORUS.Unto our loyal cry, ye gods, give ear!Save, save the city! turn away the spear,Send on the foemen fear!Outside the rampart fall they, rent and rivenBeneath the bolt of heaven!

THE SPY.Last, let me name yon seventh antagonist,Thy brother’s self, at the seventh portal set—Hear with what wrath he imprecates our doom,Vowing to mount the wall, though banished hence,And peal aloud the wild exulting cry—The town is ta’en—then clash his sword with thine,Giving and taking death in close embrace,Or, if thou ’scapest, flinging upon thee,As robber of his honour and his home,The doom of exile such as he has borne.So clamours he and so invokes the godsWho guard his race and home, to hear and heedThe curse that sounds in Polynices’ name!He bears a round shield, fresh from forge and fire,And wrought upon it is a twofold sign—For lo, a woman leads decorouslyThe figure of a warrior wrought in gold;And thus the legend runs—I Justice am,And I will bring the hero home again,To hold once more his place within this town,Once more to pace his sire’s ancestral hall.Such are the symbols, by our foemen shown—Now make thine own decision, whom to sendAgainst this last opponent! I have said—Nor canst thou in my tidings find a flaw—Thine is it, now, to steer the course aright.

ETEOCLES.Ah me, the madman, and the curse of Heaven!And woe for us, the lamentable lineOf Oedipus, and woe that in this houseOur father’s curse must find accomplishment!But now, a truce to tears and loud lament,Lest they should breed a still more rueful wail!As for this Polynices, named too well,Soon shall we know how his device shall end—Whether the gold-wrought symbols on his shield,In their mad vaunting and bewildered pride,Shall guide him as a victor to his home!For had but Justice, maiden-child of Zeus,Stood by his act and thought, it might have been!Yet never, from the day he reached the lightOut of the darkness of his mother’s womb,Never in childhood, nor in youthful prime,Nor when his chin was gathering its beard,Hath Justice hailed or claimed him as her own.Therefore I deem not that she standeth nowTo aid him in this outrage on his home!Misnamed, in truth, were Justice, utterly,If to impiety she lent her hand.Sure in this faith, I will myself go forthAnd match me with him; who hath fairer claim?Ruler, against one fain to snatch the rule,Brother with brother matched, and foe with foe,Will I confront the issue. To the wall!

CHORUS.O thou true heart, O child of Oedipus,Be not, in wrath, too like the man whose nameMurmurs an evil omen! ’Tis enoughThat Cadmus’ clan should strive with Argos’ host,For blood there is that can atone that stain!But—brother upon brother dealing death—Not time itself can expiate the sin!

ETEOCLES.If man find hurt, yet clasp his honour still,’Tis well; the dead have honour, nought beside.Hurt, with dishonour, wins no word of praise!

CHORUS.Ah, what is thy desire?Let not the lust and ravin of the swordBear thee adown the tide accursed, abhorred!Fling off thy passion’s rage, thy spirit’s prompting dire!

ETEOCLES.Nay—since the god is urgent for our doom,Let Laius’ house, by Phoebus loathed and scorned,Follow the gale of destiny, and winIts great inheritance, the gulf of hell!

CHORUS.Ruthless thy craving is—Craving for kindred and forbidden bloodTo be outpoured—a sacrifice imbruedWith sin, a bitter fruit of murderous enmities!

ETEOCLES.Yea, my own father’s fateful Curse proclaims—A ghastly presence, and her eyes are dry—Strike! honour is the prize, not life prolonged!

CHORUS.Ah, be not urged of her! for none shall dareTo call theecoward, in thy throned estate!Will not the Fury in her sable pallPass outward from these halls, what time the godsWelcome a votive offering from our hands?

ETEOCLES.The gods! long since they hold us in contempt,Scornful of gifts thus offered by the lost!Why should we fawn and flinch away from doom?

CHORUS.Now, when it stands beside thee! for its powerMay, with a changing gust of milder mood,Temper the blast that bloweth wild and rudeAnd frenzied, in this hour!

ETEOCLES.Ay, kindled by the curse of Oedipus—All too prophetic, out of dreamland cameThe vision, meting out our sire’s estate!

CHORUS.Heed women’s voices, though thou love them not!

ETEOCLES.Say aught that may avail, but stint thy words.

CHORUS.Go not thou forth to guard the seventh gate!

ETEOCLES.Words shall not blunt the edge of my resolve.

CHORUS.Yet the god loves to let the weak prevail.

ETEOCLES.That to a swordsman, is no welcome word!

CHORUS.Shall thine own brother’s blood be victory’s palm?

ETEOCLES.Ill which the gods have sent thou canst not shun!

[ExitETEOCLES.]

CHORUS.I shudder in dread of the power, abhorred by the gods of high heaven,The ruinous curse of the home till roof-tree and rafter be riven!Too true are the visions of ill, too true the fulfilment they bringTo the curse that was spoken of old by the frenzy and wrath of the king!Her will is the doom of the children, and Discord is kindled amain,And strange is the Lord of Division, who cleaveth the birthright in twain,—The edged thing, born of the north, the steel that is ruthless and keen,Dividing in bitter division the lot of the children of teen!Not the wide lowland around, the realm of their sire, shall they have,Yet enough for the dead to inherit, the pitiful space of a grave!Ah, but when kin meets kin, when sire and child,Unknowing, are defiledBy shedding common blood, and when the pitOf death devoureth it,Drinking the clotted stain, the gory dye—Who, who can purify?Who cleanse pollution, where the ancient baneRises and reeks again?Whilome in olden days the sin was wrought,And swift requital brought—Yea on the children of the child came stillNew heritage of ill!For thrice Apollo spoke this word divine,From Delphi’s central shrine,To Laius—Die thou childless!thus aloneCan the land’s weal be won!But vainly with his wife’s desire he strove,And gave himself to love,Begetting Oedipus, by whom he died,The fateful parricide!The sacred seed-plot, his own mother’s womb,He sowed, his house’s doom,A root of blood! by frenzy lured, they cameUnto their wedded shame.And now the waxing surge, the wave of fate,Rolls on them, triply great—One billow sinks, the next towers, high and dark,Above our city’s bark—Only the narrow barrier of the wallTotters, as soon to fall;And, if our chieftains in the storm go down,What chance can save the town?Curses, inherited from long ago,Bring heavy freight of woe:Rich stores of merchandise o’erload the deck,Near, nearer comes the wreck—And all is lost, cast out upon the wave,Floating, with none to save!Whom did the gods, whom did the chief of men,Whom did each citizenIn crowded concourse, in such honour hold,As Oedipus of old,When the grim fiend, that fed on human prey,He took from us away?But when, in the fulness of days, he knew of his bridal unblest,A twofold horror he wrought, in the frenzied despair of his breast—Debarred from the grace of the banquet, the service of goblets of gold,He flung on his children a curse for the splendour they dared to withhold,A curse prophetic and bitter—The glory of wealth and of pride,With iron, not gold, in your hands, ye shall come, at the last, to divide!Behold, how a shudder runs through me, lest now, in the fulness of time,The house-fiend awake and return, to mete out the measure of crime!

EnterTHE SPY.

THE SPY.Take heart, ye daughters whom your mothers’ milkMade milky-hearted! lo, our city stands,Saved from the yoke of servitude: the vauntsOf overweening men are silent now,And the State sails beneath a sky serene,Nor in the manifold and battering wavesHath shipped a single surge, and solid standsThe rampart, and the gates are made secure,Each with a single champion’s trusty guard.So in the main and at six gates we holdA victory assured; but, at the seventh,The god that on the seventh day was born,Royal Apollo, hath ta’en up his restTo wreak upon the sons of OedipusTheir grandsire’s wilfulness of long ago.

CHORUS.What further woefulness besets our home?

THE SPY.The home stands safe—but ah, the princes twain—

CHORUS.Who? what of them? I am distraught with fear.

THE SPY.Hear now, and mark! the sons of Oedipus—

CHORUS.Ah, my prophetic soul! I feel their doom.

THE SPY.Have done with questions!—with their lives crushed out—

CHORUS.Lie they out yonder? the full horror speak!Did hands meet hands more close than brotherly?Came fate on each, and in the selfsame hour?

THE SPY.Yea, blotting out the lineage ill-starred!Now mix your exultation and your tears,Over a city saved, the while its lords,Twin leaders of the fight, have parcelled outWith forged arbitrament of Scythian steelThe full division of their fatherland,And, as their father’s imprecation bade,Shall have their due of land, a twofold grave.So is the city saved; the earth has drunkBlood of twin princes, by each other slain.

CHORUS.O mighty Zeus and guardian powers,The strength and stay of Cadmus’ towers!Shall I send forth a joyous cry,Hail to the lord of weal renewed?Or weep the misbegotten twain,Born to a fatal destiny?Each numbered now among the slain,Each dying in ill fortitude,Eachtruly named, eachchild of feud?O dark and all-prevailing ill,That broods o’er Oedipus and all his line,Numbing my heart with mortal chill!Ah me, this song of mine,Which, Thyad-like, I woke, now falleth still,Or only tells of doom,And echoes round a tomb!Dead are they, dead! in their own blood they lie—Ill-omened the concent that hails our victory!The curse a father on his children spakeHath faltered not, nor failed!Nought, Laius! thy stubborn choice availed—First to beget, then, in the after dayAnd for the city’s sake,The child to slay!For nought can blunt nor marThe speech oracular!Children of teen! by disbelief ye erred—Yet in wild weeping came fulfilment of the word!

ANTIGONEandISMENEapproach with a train of mourners, bearing the bodies ofETEOCLESandPOLYNICES.

Look up, look forth! the doom is plain,Nor spake the messenger in vain!A twofold sorrow, twofold strife—Each brave against a brother’s life!In double doom hath sorrow come—How shall I speak it?—on the home!Alas, my sisters! be your sighs the gale,The smiting of your brows the plash of oars,Wafting the boat, to Acheron’s dim shoresThat passeth ever, with its darkened sail,On its uncharted voyage and sunless way,Far from thy beams, Apollo, god of day—The melancholy barkBound for the common bourn, the harbour of the dark!Look up, look yonder! from the homeAntigone, Ismene come,On the last, saddest errand bound,To chant a dirge of doleful sound,With agony of equal painAbove their brethren slain!Their sister-bosoms surely swell,Heart with rent heart according wellIn grief for those who fought and fell!Yet—ere they utter forth their woe—We must awake the rueful strainTo vengeful powers, in realms below,And mourn hell’s triumph o’er the slain!Alas! of all, the breast who bind,—Yea, all the race of womankind—O maidens, ye are most bereaved!For you, for you the tear-drops start—Deem that in truth, and undeceived,Ye hear the sorrows of my heart!(To the dead.)Children of bitterness, and sternly brave—One, proud of heart against persuasion’s voice,One, against exile proof! ye win your choice—Each in your fatherland, a separate grave!Alack, on house and heritageThey brought a baneful doom, and death for wage!One strove through tottering walls to force his way,One claimed, in bitter arrogance, the sway,And both alike, even now and here,Have closed their suit, with steel for arbiter!And lo, the Fury-fiend of Oedipus, their sire,Hath brought his curse to consummation dire!Each in the left side smitten, see them laid—The children of one womb,Slain by a mutual doom!Alas, their fate! the combat murderous,The horror of the house,The curse of ancient bloodshed, now repaid!Yea, deep and to the heart the deathblow fell,Edged by their feud ineffable—By the grim curse, their sire did imprecate—Discord and deadly hate!Hark, how the city and its towers make moan—How the land mourns that held them for its own!Fierce greed and fell division did they blend,Till death made end!They strove to part the heritage in twain,Giving to each a gain—Yet that which struck the balance in the strife,The arbitrating sword,By those who loved the twain is held abhorred—Loathed is the god of death, who sundered each from life!Here, by the stroke of steel, behold! they lie—And rightly may we cryBeside their fathers, let them here be laid—Iron gave their doom, with iron their graves be made—Alack, the slaying sword, alack, th’ entombing spade!Alas, a piercing shriek, a rending groan,A cry unfeigned of sorrow felt at heart!With shuddering of grief, with tears that start,With wailful escort, let them hither come—For one or other make divided moan!No light lament of pity mixed with gladness,But with true tears, poured from the soul of sadness,Over the princes dead and their bereavèd homeSay we, above these brethren dead,On citizen, on foreign foe,Brave was their rush, and stern their blow—Now, lowly are they laid!Beyond all women upon earthWoe, woe for her who gave them birth!Unknowingly, her son she wed—The children of that marriage-bed,Each in the self-same womb, were bred—Each by a brother’s hand lies dead!Yea, from one seed they sprang, and by one fateTheir heritage is desolate,The heart’s division sundered claim from claim,And, from their feud, death came!Now is their hate allayed,Now is their life-stream shed,Ensanguining the earth with crimson dye—Lo, from one blood they sprang, and in one blood they lie!A grievous arbiter was given the twain—The stranger from the northern main,The sharp, dividing sword,Fresh from the forge and fireThe War-god treacherous gave ill awardAnd brought their father’s curse to a fulfilment dire!They have their portion—each his lot and doom,Given from the gods on high!Yea, the piled wealth of fatherland, for tomb,Shall underneath them lie!Alas, alas! with flowers of fame and prideYour home ye glorified;But, in the end, the Furies gathered roundWith chants of boding sound,Shrieking,In wild defeat and disarray,Behold, ye pass away!The sign of Ruin standeth at the gate,There, where they strove with Fate—And the ill power beheld the brothers’ fall,And triumphed over all!

ANTIGONE, ISMENE,andCHORUS(Processional Chant)Thou wert smitten, in smiting,Thou didst slay, and wert slain—By the spear of each otherYe lie on the plain,And ruthless the deed that ye wrought was, and ruthless the death of the twain!Take voice, O my sorrow!Flow tear upon tear—Lay the slain by the slayer,Made one on the bier!Our soul in distraction is lost, and we mourn o’er the prey of the spear!Ah, woe for your ending,Unbrotherly wrought!And woe for the issue,The fray that ye fought,The doom of a mutual slaughter whereby to the grave ye are brought!Ah, twofold the sorrow—The heard and the seen!And double the tideOf our tears and our teen,As we stand by our brothers in death and wail for the love that has been!O grievous the fateThat attends upon wrong!Stern ghost of our sire,Thy vengeance is long!Dark Fury of hell and of death, the hands of thy kingdom are strong!O dark were the sorrowsThat exile hath known!He slew, but returned notAlive to his own!He struck down a brother, but fell, in the moment of triumph hewn down!O lineage accurst,O doom and despair!Alas, for their quarrel,The brothers that were!And woe! for their pitiful end, who once were our love and our care!O grievous the fateThat attends upon wrong!Stern ghost of our sire,Thy vengeance is long!Dark Fury of hell and of death, the hands of thy kingdom are strong!By proof have ye learnt it!At once and as one,O brothers beloved,To death ye were done!Ye came to the strife of the sword, and behold! ye are both overthrown!O grievous the tale is,And grievous their fall,To the house, to the land,And to me above all!Ah God! for the curse that hath come, the sin and the ruin withal!O children distraught,Who in madness have died!Shall ye rest with old kingsIn the place of their pride?Alas for the wrath of your sire if he findeth you laid by his side!

Enter aHERALD.

HERALD.I bear command to tell to one and allWhat hath approved itself and now is law,Ruled by the counsellors of Cadmus’ town.For this Eteocles, it is resolvedTo lay him on his earth-bed, in this soil,Not without care and kindly sepulture.For why? he hated those who hated us,And, with all duties blamelessly performedUnto the sacred ritual of his sires,He met such end as gains our city’s grace,—With auspices that do ennoble death.Such words I have in charge to speak of him:But of his brother Polynices, this—Be he cast out unburied, for the dogsTo rend and tear: for he presumed to wasteThe land of the Cadmeans, had not Heaven—Some god of those who aid our fatherland—Opposed his onset, by his brother’s spear,To whom, tho’ dead, shall consecration come!Against him stood this wretch, and brought a hordeOf foreign foemen, to beset our town.He therefore shall receive his recompense,Buried ignobly in the maw of kites—No women-wailers to escort his corpseNor pile his tomb nor shrill his dirge anew—Unhouselled, unattended, cast away!So, for these brothers, doth our State ordain.

ANTIGONE.And I—to those who make such claims of ruleIn Cadmus’ town—I, though no other help,(Pointing to the body ofPOLYNICES)I, I will bury this my brother’s corseAnd risk your wrath and what may come of it!It shames me not to face the State, and setWill against power, rebellion resolute:Deep in my heart is set my sisterhood,My common birthright with my brothers, bornAll of one womb, her children who, for woe,Brought forth sad offspring to a sire ill-starred.Therefore, my soul! take thou thy willing share,In aid of him who now can will no more,Against this outrage: be a sister true,While yet thou livest, to a brother dead!Him never shall the wolves with ravening mawRend and devour: I do forbid the thought!I for him, I—albeit a woman weak—In place of burial-pit, will give him restBy this protecting handful of light dustWhich, in the lap of this poor linen robe,I bear to hallow and bestrew his corpseWith the due covering. Let none gainsay!Courage and craft shall arm me, this to do.

HERALD.I charge thee, not to flout the city’s law!

ANTIGONE.I charge thee, use no useless heralding!

HERALD.Stern is a people newly ’scaped from death.

ANTIGONE.Whet thou their sternness! Burial he shall have.

HERALD.How? Grace of burial, to the city’s foe?

ANTIGONE.God hath not judged him separate in guilt.

HERALD.True—till he put this land in jeopardy.

ANTIGONE.His rights usurped, he answered wrong with wrong.

HERALD.Nay—but for one man’s sin he smote the State.

ANTIGONE.Contention doth out-talk all other gods! Prate thou no more—I will to bury him.

HERALD.Will, an thou wilt! but I forbid the deed.

[Exit theHERALD.]

CHORUS.Exulting Fates, who waste the lineAnd whelm the house of Oedipus!Fiends, who have slain, in wrath condign,The father and the children thus!What now befits it that I do,What meditate, what undergo?Can I the funeral rite refrain,Nor weep for Polynices slain?But yet, with fear I shrink and thrill,Presageful of the city’s will!Thou, O Eteocles, shalt haveFull rites, and mourners at thy grave,But he, thy brother slain, shall he,With none to weep or cryAlas,To unbefriended burial pass?Only one sister o’er his bier,To raise the cry and pour the tear—Who can obey such stern decree?

SEMI-CHORUS.Let those who hold our city’s swayWreak, or forbear to wreak, their willOn those who cry,Ah, well-a-day!Lamenting Polynices still!We will go forth and, side by sideWith her, due burial will provide!Royal he was; to him be paidOur grief, wherever he be laid!The crowd may sway, and change, and stillTake its caprice for Justice’ will!But we this dead Eteocles,As Justice wills and Right decrees,Will bear unto his grave!For—under those enthroned on highAnd Zeus’ eternal royalty—He unto us salvation gave!He saved us from a foreign yoke,—A wild assault of outland folk,A savage, alien wave!

[Exeunt.]

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