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Antigone
I do not veil my tender cheek shaded with curls, nor do I feel shame, from maiden modesty, at the dark red beneath my eyes, the blush upon my face, as I hurry on, in bacchic revelry for the dead,
1485
casting from my hair its mantle and letting my delicate saffron robe fly loose, a tearful escort to the dead. Ah me!
1490
Oh, Polyneices! you were rightly named, after all; woe to you,
Thebes
!
Your strife—not strife, but murder on murder— has brought the house of Oedipus to ruin with dire and grim bloodshed. What harmonious or tuneful wailing can I summon,
1495
for my tears, my tears, oh, my home! oh, my home! as I bear these three kindred bodies, my mother and her sons, a welcome sight to the Fury? She destroyed the house of Oedipus, root and branch,
1500
when his shrewdness solved the Sphinx’s unsolvable song and killed that savage singer. Alas for you, father! What other Hellene or barbarian,
1505
what mortal from a noble line ever endured the anguish of such visible afflictions?
1510
Ah! poor girl, how piteous is your cry!
What bird, perched on the high-leaved branches of oak or pine, will come to mourn with me, left motherless? With cries of woe,
1515
I lament before it comes the piteous lonely life, that I shall live for the rest of time, in streaming tears. On which of these
1520
shall I throw my offerings first, plucking the hair from my head? on the breast of the mother that suckled me, or beside the ghastly death-wounds of my brothers’ corpses?
1525
I do not veil my tender cheek shaded with curls, nor do I feel shame, from maiden modesty, at the dark red beneath my eyes, the blush upon my face, as I hurry on, in bacchic revelry for the dead,
1485
casting from my hair its mantle and letting my delicate saffron robe fly loose, a tearful escort to the dead. Ah me!
1490
Oh, Polyneices! you were rightly named, after all; woe to you,
Thebes
!
Your strife—not strife, but murder on murder— has brought the house of Oedipus to ruin with dire and grim bloodshed. What harmonious or tuneful wailing can I summon,
1495
for my tears, my tears, oh, my home! oh, my home! as I bear these three kindred bodies, my mother and her sons, a welcome sight to the Fury? She destroyed the house of Oedipus, root and branch,
1500
when his shrewdness solved the Sphinx’s unsolvable song and killed that savage singer. Alas for you, father! What other Hellene or barbarian,
1505
what mortal from a noble line ever endured the anguish of such visible afflictions?
1510
Ah! poor girl, how piteous is your cry!
What bird, perched on the high-leaved branches of oak or pine, will come to mourn with me, left motherless? With cries of woe,
1515
I lament before it comes the piteous lonely life, that I shall live for the rest of time, in streaming tears. On which of these
1520
shall I throw my offerings first, plucking the hair from my head? on the breast of the mother that suckled me, or beside the ghastly death-wounds of my brothers’ corpses?
1525
The Phoenician Women. Euripides. Edward P. Coleridge (Translator). London. 1891.
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