Creon: And am I wrong, if I maintain my rights?
Haemon: Talk not of rights; thou spurn’st the due of Heaven.
Creon: O heart corrupt, a woman’s minion thou!
Haemon: Slave to dishonour thou wilt never find me.
Creon: Thy speech at least was all a plea for her.
Haemon: And thee and me, and for the gods below.
Creon: Living the maid shall never be thy bride.
Haemon: So she shall die, but one will die with her.
Creon: Hast come to such a pass as threaten me?
Haemon: What threat is this, vain counsels to reprove?
Creon: Vain fool to instruct thy betters; thou shall rue it.
Haemon: Wert not my father, I had said thou err’st.
Creon: Play not the spaniel, thou a woman’s slave.
Haemon: When thou dost speak, must no man make reply?
Creon: This passes bounds. By heaven, thou shalt not rate And jeer and flout me with impunity. Off with the hateful thing that she may die At once, beside her bridegroom, in his sight.
Haemon: Think not that in my sight the maid shall die, Or by my side; never shalt thou again Behold my face hereafter. Go, consort With friends who like a madman for their mate. Exit Haemon.
Chorus: Thy son has gone, my liege, in angry haste. Fell is the wrath of youth beneath a smart.
Creon: Let him go vent his fury like a fiend: These sisters twain he shall not save from death.
Chorus: Surely, thou meanest not to slay them both?
Creon: I stand corrected; only her who touched The body.
Chorus: And what death is she to die?
Creon: She shall be taken to some desert place By man untrod, and in a rock-hewn cave, With food no more than to avoid the taint That homicide might bring on all the State, Buried alive. There let her call in aid The King of Death, the one god she reveres, Or learn too late a lesson learnt at last: ’Tis labour lost, to reverence the dead.
Chorus: Strophe
Love resistless in fight, all yield at a glance of thine eye, Love who pillowed all night on a maiden’s cheek dost lie, Over the upland folds thou roam’st, and the trackless sea. Love the gods captive holds. Shall mortals not yield to thee?
Antistrophe