Page:The Antigone of Sophocles (1911).djvu/44

40 At this I have no sense of pain. And now

If haply I do seem to you to play

The fool, it seems to me almost that I

This charge of folly from a fool incur.

In this the child betrays her parentage:

To evils dire she knows not how to yield.

But dispositions overstiff may break

And hardest iron, heated by the fire,

And highly tempered, oft will crack and snap;

And by a trifling curb highmettled steeds

Are oft obedient made. No claim for pride

Has one, when he is but his neighbor’s slave;

This girl knows how to show us insolence,—

Her first insult was to transgress the law,

And now a second, after this appears,

To laugh and boast at having done the deed.

In sooth I am no man—the man is she,

If she unpunished can defy the law.

What boots it if she be my sister’s child?

Were she still nearer to me than my own,

Nor she nor sister shall escape a doom

Most dire,—for both are equally to blame.

Go ye and call the other; for but now

I saw her reft of reason, raving mad.

The mind is oft detected ere its plots

Devised in darkness can be carried out.

Whoso convicted glorifies his crime

I hate no less than one who hides his sin.

Seek you a greater penalty than death?

Not I. When I have that, no more I seek.

Then why delay? You see your words by me

Are not approved, and may I ne’er behold the day

When words like these with my approval meet.

My views shall never be subscribed by you,

Nor yours by me. And yet how could I win

A nobler glory than by laying him,

My dear unburied brother, in the tomb?

All here their commendation would bestow,

Were not their tongues by fear of you engaoled.