Page:The Antigone of Sophocles (1911).djvu/24

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would feel that I had them with me as when I had my sight. What! Can it be? O ye gods! do I hear my sweet girls sobbing? Can it be that Creon has taken pity on me and brought my darlings here? Is it true?

“Yes, I did, for I knew that you yearned to have them.”

“Heaven bless you for your kindness and may it prove a better guardian than to me.—O my children, where are you? Come here, come to these brother arms of mine, to these hands that made your father’s eyes once bright, such orbs as these, because seeing naught, knowing naught, I became the author of your being at the source of my own existence. I can but weep for you—unable to see—to think of all the bitter days you now will have to live. To what gatherings, to what festivals will you go, and not come back home in tears instead of smiles. And when you reach the age to wed, who, my children, who will risk to take upon himself the disgrace that blights my own offspring, as it must yours? For wickedness and crime of every sort are here. Your father killed his father, wed his mother, and got children of her from whom he sprang himself, so that father, daughter, both were fruit of the selfsame womb. These taunts they will cast at you—then who will wed? There is none, my children, and you must wither barren and unmarried. O son of Menoiceus, you are all that’s left to them—for we twain who gave them birth are gone—do not suffer them, your poor, little nieces, to roam about as homeless waifs.—Bring them not down to the level of my shame and misery. Have compassion on them: they are so young, so delicate, so utterly destitute, except for you. Say that you will—signify that you will, and touch me with your hand. Children, were you old enough, I would give you much advice; but this must now suffice: endeavor to live as Heaven wills, and may your lot be happier than your father’s.”

“You have indulged your grief enough now. Go within.”

“I must obey, though hard it is.”