Sophocles

“ Who thus hath willed. I am his minister.
PHI. Wretch, what vile words thy wit hath power to say!
The gods are liars when invoked by thee.
OD. Nay, ’tis their truth compels thee to this voyage.
PHI. I will not have it so.
OD. I will. Thou shalt.
PHI. Woe for my wretchedness! My father, then,
Begat no freeman, but a slave in me.
OD. Nay, but the peer of noblest men, with whom
Thou art to take and ravage Troy with might.
PHI. Never,—though I must suffer direst woe,—
While this steep Lemnian ground is mine to tread!
OD. What now is thine intent? ”

“ The curse from Heaven shall dog thy footsteps still.
HYL. Ah! thou wilt tell me that thy pain is come.
HER. Yea, for thou wak’st the torment that had slept.
HYL. Ay me! how cross and doubtful is my way!
HER. Because you will reject your father’s word.
HYL. Must I be taught impiety from thee?
HER. It is not impious to content my heart.
HYL. Then you require this with an absolute will?
HER. And bid Heaven witness to my strong command.
HYL. Then I will do it, for the act is thine.
I will not cast it off. Obeying thee,
My sire, the Gods will ne’er reprove my deed.
HER. Thou endest fairly. ”

“ What wilt thou make of me? What mean’st thou?
NEO. First to release thee from this plague, and then
With thee to go and take the realm of Troy.
PHI. And is this thine intent?
NEO. ’Tis so ordained
Unchangeably. Be not dismayed! ’Tis so.
PHI. Me miserable! I am betrayed, undone!
What guile is here? My bow! give back my bow!
NEO. I may not. Interest, and duty too,
Force me to obey commandment.
PHI. O thou fire,
Thou terror of the world! Dark instrument
Of ever-hateful guile!—What hast thou done?
How thou hast cheated me! Art not ashamed
To look on him that sued to thee for shelter? ”

“ Prays oftentimes thou may’st return alive—
O’er awe thee. Yea, and pity thine own son,
Unsheltered in his boyhood, lorn of thee,
With bitter foes to tend his orphanhood,
Think, O my lord, what sorrow in thy death
Thou send’st on him and me. For I have nought
To lean to but thy life. My fatherland
Thy spear hath ruined. Fate—not thou—hath sent
My sire and mother to the home of death
What wealth have I to comfort me for thee?
What land of refuge? Thou art all my stay
Oh, of me too take thought! Shall men have joy,
And not remember? Or shall kindness fade? ”

“ Thou followest, that a god may give thee light.
ODYSSEUS. Athena, ’tis thy voice! Dearest in heaven,
How well discerned and welcome to my soul
From that dim distance doth thine utterance fly
In tones as of Tyrrhenian trumpet clang!
Rightly hast thou divined mine errand here,
Beating this ground for Aias of the shield,
The lion-quarry whom I track to day.
For he hath wrought on us to night a deed
Past thought—if he be doer of this thing;
We drift in ignorant doubt, unsatisfied—
And I unbidden have bound me to this toil. ”

“ And though, this hour, between great Thebes and thee
No cloud be in the heaven, yet moving Time
Enfolds a countless brood of days to come,
Wherein for a light cause they shall destroy
Your now harmonious league with severing war,
Even where my slumbering form, buried in death,
Coldly shall drink the life blood of my foes,
If Zeus be Zeus, and his son Phoebus true.
I would not speak aloud of mysteries.
Then let me leave where I began. Preserve
Thine own good faith, and thou shalt never say,
Unless Heaven’s promise fail me, that for nought
Athens took Oedipus to dwell with her. ”

“ Speech is my realm; Apollo rules my life,
Not thou. Nor need I Creon to protect me.
Now, then: my blindness moves thy scorn:—thou hast
Thy sight, and seest not where thou art sunk in evil,
What halls thou dost inhabit, or with whom:
Know’st not from whence thou art—nay, to thy kin,
Buried in death and here above the ground,
Unwittingly art a most grievous foe.
And when thy father’s and thy mother’s curse
With fearful tread shall drive thee from the land,
On both sides lashing thee,—thine eye so clear
Beholding darkness in that day,—oh, then,
What region will not shudder at thy cry? ”

“ Reveal my woe;—mine, that I say not, thine.
OED. So, then, thou hast the knowledge of the crime
And wilt not tell, but rather wouldst betray
This people, and destroy thy fatherland!
TI. You press me to no purpose. I’ll not pain
Thee, nor myself. Thou wilt hear nought from me.
OED. How? Miscreant! Thy stubbornness would rouse
Wrath in a breast of stone. Wilt thou yet hold
That silent, hard, impenetrable mien?
TI. You censure me for my harsh mood. Your own
Dwells unsuspected with you. Me you blame!
OED. Who can be mild and gentle, when thou speakest
Such words to mock this people? ”

“ Ha! ’tis some knavery. Are ye come to add
Some monster evil to my mountainous woe?
NEO. Fear not, but hearken to what now I speak.
PHI. I needs must fear thee, whose fair words erewhile
Brought me to bitter fortune.
NEO. May not men
Repent and change?
PHI. Such wast thou in thy talk,
When thou didst rob me of my bow,—so bright
Without, so black within.
NEO. Ah, but not now,
Assure thee! Only let me hear thy will,
Is ’t constant to remain here and endure,
Or to make voyage with us?
PHI. Stop, speak no more!
Idle and vain will all thine utterance be.
NEO. Thou art so resolved? ”

“ Unbroken.—How then shouldst thou come in vain?
EL. O misery! ’Tis time to wail thy fate,
Orestes, when, in thy calamity,
Thy mother thus insults thee. Is it well?
CLY. ’Tis well that he is gone, not that you live.
EL. Hear, ’venging spirits of the lately dead!
CLY. The avenging spirits have heard and answered well.
EL. Insult us now, for thou art fortunate!
CLY. You and Orestes are to quench my pride.
EL. Our pride is quenched. No hope of quenching thee!
CLY. A world of good is in thy coming, stranger,
Since thou hast silenced this all-clamorous tongue. ”

“ MESS. Look hither, man. Who is’t to whom thou speakest?
LICH. Why such a question? What is thine intent?
MESS. Nay, start not, but make answer if thou knowest.
LICH. To Dêanira, Oeneus’ queenly child,
Heracles’ wife,—if these mine eyes be true,—
My mistress.
MESS. Ay, that is the very word
I longed to hear thee speak. Thy mistress, sayest?
LICH. To whom I am bound.
MESS. Hold there! What punishment
Wilt thou accept, if thou art found to be
Faithless to her?
LICH. I faithless! What dark speech
Hast thou contrived?
MESS. Not I at all. ’Tis thou
Dost wrap thy thoughts i’ the dark. ”

“ CH. Well, if the man be capable of fear,
He’ll not remain when he hath heard thy curse.
OED. Words have no terror for the soul that dares
Such doings.
CH. Yet lives one who shall convict him.
For look where now they lead the holy seer,
Whom sacred Truth inspires alone of men.
Enter TIRESIAS.
OED. O thou whose universal thought commands
All knowledge and all mysteries, in Heaven
And on the earth beneath, thy mind perceives,
Tirésias, though thine outward eye be dark,
What plague is wasting Thebè, who in thee,
Great Sir, finds her one saviour, her sole guide. ”

“ NEO. Well, now the bow is thine. Thou hast no cause
For blame or anger any more ’gainst me.
PHI. None. Thou hast proved thy birthright, dearest boy.
Not from the loins of Sisyphus thou earnest,
But from Achilles, who in life was held
Noblest of men alive, and now o’ the dead.
NEO. It gladdens me that thou shouldst speak in praise
Both of my sire and me. But hear me tell
The boon for which I sue thee.—Mortal men
Must bear such evils as high Heaven ordains;
But those afflicted by self-chosen ills,
Like thine to-day, receive not from just men
Or kind indulgence or compassionate thought. ”

“ To punish home the murderers of my sire,
Had word from Phoebus which you straight shall hear:
‘No shielded host, but thine own craft, O King!
The righteous death-blow to thine arm shall bring.’
Then, since the will of Heaven is so revealed,
Go thou within, when Opportunity
Shall marshal thee the way, and gathering all
Their business, bring us certain cognizance.
Age and long absence are a safe disguise;
They never will suspect thee who thou art.
And let thy tale be that another land,
Phocis, hath sent thee forth, and Phanoteus,
Than whom they have no mightier help in war. ”

“ AI. Moves he? or do thine accents idly fall?
TEC. See, where thy people bring him to thine eye.
AI. Lift him to me: lift him! He will not fear
At sight of this fresh havoc of the sword,
If rightly he be fathered of my blood.
Like some young colt he must be trained and taught
To run fierce courses with his warrior sire.
Be luckier than thy father, boy! but else
Be like him, and thy life will not be low.
One thing even now I envy thee, that none
Of all this misery pierces to thy mind.
For life is sweetest in the void of sense,
Ere thou know joy or sorrow. ”

“ CHR. Even when thou speak’st me fair, I will endure it.
EL. Take heart. That never will be thine from me.
CHR. Long time remains to settle that account.
EL. I find no profit in thee. Go thy way.
CHR. Profit there is, hadst thou a mind to learn.
EL. Go to thy mother and declare all this!
CHR. I am not so in hatred of thy life.
EL. Yet know the shame thou wouldst prepare for me.
CHR. No, no! Not shame, but care for thine estate.
EL. Must I still follow as thou thinkest good?
CHR. When thou hast wisdom, thou shalt be the guide.
EL. ’Tis hard when error wears the garb of sense. ”

“ Wrapt close, will not deliver us to shame.
Enter LICHAS.
LICH. Daughter of Oeneus, tell me thy commands.
Already time rebukes our tardiness.
DÊ. Even that hath been my care, Lichas, while thou
Wert talking to the stranger-maids within,
That thou shouldst take for me this finewoven web,
A present from these fingers to my lord.
And when thou giv’st it, say that none of men
Must wear it on his shoulders before him;
And neither light of sun may look upon it,
Nor holy temple-court, nor household flame,
Till he in open station ’fore the Gods
Display it on a day when bulls are slaughtered. ”

“ Till we may learn where we are come. ’Tis ours
To hear the will of strangers and to obey.
ANTIGONE. Woe-wearied father, yonder city’s wall
That shields her, looks far distant; but this ground
Is surely sacred, thickly planted over
With olive, bay and vine, within whose bowers
Thick-fluttering song-birds make sweet melody.
Here then repose thee on this unhewn stone.
Thou hast travelled far to-day for one so old.
OED. Seat me, my child, and be the blind man’s guard.
ANT. Long time hath well instructed me in that.
OED. Now, canst thou tell me where we have set our feet? ”

“ It was in this latter sense that Hegel recognized the union of depth with brightness in Greek culture: ‘If the first paradise was the paradise of nature, this is the second, the higher paradise of the human spirit, which in its fair naturalness, freedom, depth and brightness here comes forth like a bride out of her chamber. The first wild majesty of the rise of spiritual life in the East is here circumscribed by the dignity of form, and softened into beauty. ”

“ Beyond redemption impious, O my sire,
Thy vengeance still would be unnatural.
Oh let him!—Others have had evil sons
And passionate anger, but the warning voice
Of friends hath charmed their mood. Then do not thou
Look narrowly upon thy present griefs,
But on those ancient wrongs thou didst endure
From father and from mother. Thence thou wilt learn
That evil passion ever ends in woe.
Thy sightless eyes are no light argument
To warn thee through the feeling of thy loss.
Relent and hear us! ’Tis a mere disgrace
To beg so long for a just boon. The King
Is kind to thee. ”

“ That, save Achilles’ self, I have not seen
So noble an Argive on the fields of Troy.
Then ’twere not just in thee to slight him now;
Nor would thy treatment wound him, but confound
The laws of Heaven. No hatred should have scope
To offend the noble spirits of the dead.
AG. Wilt thou thus fight against me on his side?
OD. Yea, though I hated him, while hate was comely.
AG. Why, thou shouldst trample him the more, being dead.
OD. Rejoice not, King, in feats that soil thy fame!
AG. ’Tis hard for power to observe each pious rule.
OD. Not hard to grace the good words of a friend. ”

“ ATH. What fine advantage wouldst thou first achieve?
AI. First, tie him to a pillar of my hall—
ATH. Poor wretch! What torment wilt thou wreak on him?
AI. Then stain his back with scourging till he die.
ATH. Nay, ’tis too much. Poor caitiff! Not the scourge!
AI. Pallas, in all things else have thou thy will,
But none shall wrest Odysseus from this doom.
ATH. Well, since thou art determined on the deed,
Spare nought of thine intent: indulge thy hand!
AI. (waving the bloody scourge.)
I go! But thou, I charge thee, let thine aid
Be evermore like valiant as to-day. ”

“ We may move shoreward and launch forth with speed.
NEO. I feel unhoped-for gladness when I see
Thy painless gaze, and hear thy living breath,
For thine appearance and surroundings both
Were deathlike. But arise! Or, if thou wilt,
These men shall raise thee. For they will not shrink
From toil which thou and I at once enjoin.
PHI. Right, right, my son! But lift me thine own self,
As I am sure thou meanest. Let these be,
Lest they be burdened with the noisome smell
Before the time. Enough for them to bear
The trouble on board.
NEO. I will; stand up, endure! ”