Stasimon 2
[Episode]
Why not? There are other fields for him to plough.
Ismene
But not fitted to him as she
was.
570
Creon
I abhor an evil wife for my son.
Antigone
Haemon, dearest! How your father wrongs you!
Creon
Enough! Enough of you and of your marriage!
Chorus
Will you really cheat your son of this girl?
Creon
Death it is who will end these
bridals for me.
575
Chorus
Then it seems that it is resolved that she will die.
Creon
Resolved, yes, for you and by me. To the two Attendants. No
more delay! Servants, take them inside! Hereafter they must be women,
and not left at large.
For it is
known that even the brave seek to flee, when they see Death now closing
on their life. Exeunt Attendants, guarding Antigone and Ismene.
Creon remains.
580
[Choral 1]
Blest are those whose days have
not tasted of evil. For when a house has once been shaken by the
gods,
Chorus
no form of ruin is
lacking, but it spreads over the bulk of the race, just as, when the
surge is driven over the darkness of the deep by the fierce breath of
Thracian sea-winds,
585
it rolls up
the black sand from the depths, and the wind-beaten headlands that front
the blows of the storm give out a mournful roar.
590
I see that the ancient sorrows of
the house of the Labdacids
are
heaped upon the sorrows of the dead. Each generation does not set its
race free, but some god hurls it down and the race has no release. For
now that dazzling ray of hope that had been spread
595
over the last roots in the house of
Oedipus—that hope, in its turn, the blood-stained dust of the gods
infernal and mindlessness in speech and frenzy at the mind cuts
down.
600
[Choral 2]
Your power, great Zeus—what human
overstepping can check it? Yours is power that neither Sleep, the
all-ensnaring, nor the untiring months of the gods can defeat. Unaged
through time,
605
Chorus
you rule by your
power and dwell thereby in the brilliant splendor of Olympus. And through the future, both
near and distant, as through the past, shall this law prevail: nothing
that is vast comes to the life of mortals without ruin.
610
See how that hope whose wanderings
are so wide truly is a benefit to many men, but to an equal number it is
a false lure of light-headed desires. The deception comes to one who is
wholly unawares until he burns his foot on a hot fire.
615
For with wisdom did someone once reveal the
maxim, now famous, that evil at one time or another seems good, to him
whose mind a god leads to ruin.
620
But for the briefest moment such a man fares free of destruction.
625
[Choral]
But here is Haemon, the last of
your offspring. Does he come grieving for the doom of Antigone, his
promised bride,
Chorus
and bitter for the
deceived hope of their marriage?
630
