Page:Sophocles - Seven Plays, 1900.djvu/62

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Must let no soul of all he rules transgress.

A self willed passion was thine overthrow.

. Friendless, uncomforted of bridal lay,

Unmourned, they lead me on my destined way.

Woe for my life forlorn! I may not see

The sacred round of yon great light

Rising again to greet me from the night;

No friend bemoans my fate, no tear hath fallen for me!

. If criminals were suffered to complain

In dirges before death, they ne’er would end.

Away with her at once, and closing her,

As I commanded, in the vaulty tomb,

Leave her all desolate, whether to die,

Or to live on in that sepulchral cell.

We are guiltless in the matter of this maid;

Only she shall not share the light of day.

. O grave! my bridal chamber, prison-house

Eterne, deep-hollowed, whither I am led

To find mine own,—of whom Persephonè

Hath now a mighty number housed in death:—

I last of all, and far most miserably,

Am going, ere my days have reached their term!

Yet lives the hope that, when I go, most surely

Dear will my coming be, father, to thee,

And dear to thee, my mother, and to thee,

Brother! since with these very hands I decked

And bathed you after death, and ministered

The last libations. And I reap this doom

For tending, Polynices, on thy corse.

Indeed I honoured thee, the wise will say.

For neither, had I children, nor if one

I had married were laid bleeding on the earth,

Would I have braved the city’s will, or taken

This burden on me. Wherefore? I will tell.

A husband lost might be replaced; a son,

If son were lost to me, might yet be born;

But, with both parents hidden in the tomb,

No brother may arise to comfort me.