Chorus: What mean ye, maidens?
Antigone: All is but surmise.
Chorus: Is he then gone?
Antigone: Gone as ye most might wish. Not in battle or sea storm, But reft from sight, By hands invisible borne To viewless fields of night. Ah me! on us too night has come, The night of mourning. Whither roam O’er land or sea in our distress Eating the bread of bitterness?
Ismene: I know not. O that Death Might nip my breath, And let me share my aged father’s fate. I cannot live a life thus desolate.
Chorus: Best of daughters, worthy pair, What heaven brings ye needs must bear, Fret no more ’gainst Heaven’s will; Fate hath dealt with you not ill.
Antigone: Antistrophe 1
Love can turn past pain to bliss, What seemed bitter now is sweet. Ah me! that happy toil to miss, The guidance of those dear blind feet. Dear father, wrapt for aye in nether gloom, E’en in the tomb Never shalt thou lack of love repine, Her love and mine.
Chorus: His fate—
Antigone: Is even as he planned.
Chorus: How so?
Antigone: He died, so willed he, in a foreign land. Lapped in kind earth he sleeps his long last sleep, And o’er his grave friends weep. How great our lost these streaming eyes can tell, This sorrow naught can quell. Thou hadst thy wish ’mid strangers thus to die, But I, ah me, not by.
Ismene: Alas, my sister, what new fate … … Befalls us orphans desolate?
Chorus: His end was blessèd; therefore, children, stay Your sorrow. Man is born to fate a prey.
Antigone: Strophe 2
Sister, let us back again.
Ismene: Why return?
Antigone: My soul is fain—
Ismene: Is fain?
Antigone: To see the earthy bed.
Ismene: Sayest thou?
Antigone: Where our sire is laid.
Ismene: Nay, thou can’st not; dost not see—
Antigone: Sister, wherefore wroth with me?
Ismene: Know’st not—beside—