Page:Sophocles - Seven Plays, 1900.djvu/38

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Ay, and for mine! I am not left out!—And now

He moves this way to promulgate his will

To such as have not heard, nor lightly holds

The thing he bids, but, whoso disobeys,

The citizens shall stone him to the death.

This is the matter, and thou wilt quickly show

If thou art noble, or fallen below thy birth.

. Unhappy one! But what can I herein

Avail to do or undo?

.Wilt thou share

The danger and the labour? Make thy choice.

. Of what wild enterprise? What canst thou mean?

. Wilt thou join hand with mine to lift the dead?

. To bury him, when all have been forbidden?

Is that thy thought?

.To bury my own brother

And thine, even though thou wilt not do thy part.

I will not be a traitress to my kin.

. Fool-hardy girl! against the word of Creon?

. He hath no right to bar me from mine own.

. Ah, sister, think but how our father fell,

Hated of all and lost to fair renown,

Through self-detected crimes—with his own hand,

Self-wreaking, how he dashed out both his eyes:

Then how the mother-wife, sad two-fold name!

With twisted halter bruised her life away;

Last, how in one dire moment our two brothers

With internecine conflict at a blow

Wrought out by fratricide their mutual doom.

Now, left alone, O think how beyond all

Most piteously we twain shall be destroyed,

If in defiance of authority

We traverse the commandment of the King!

We needs must bear in mind we are but women.

Never created to contend with men;

Nay more, made victims of resistless power.

To obey behests more harsh than this to-day.

I, then, imploring those beneath to grant