Creon
Can see you, thinking on the cruel griefs
Which must embitter all your life, I weep.
To the bright circles of assembled dames
How will you go? Or how on festive days
To the throng'd theatre, returning home
More than each spectacle of tragic woe
Lamented there? But when your blooming age
Leads on the nuptial hour, who is the man,
My children, that will lead you to his house,
Regardless of the infamy which marks
My parents, and devolves the stain on you?
Interminable ills? Your father kill'd
His father, mounted then his mother's bed
And gave you, whence he drew his own, your birth.
With infamy you thus will be reproach'd :
What youth will wed you then? Alas, not one :
Neglected, O my children, must you waste
In cheerless solitude your lives away....
Son of Menæceus, since alone to these
A father thou art left (for we, who were
Their parents, are no more) neglect them not,
They are allied to thee, let them not roam
Unhusbanded, unfriended, and to want
Exposed, nor let their miseries equal mine:
Have pity on them, for their helpless age
Thou seest, by all abandon'd, save what rests
On thee: assent then, O thou generous man,
And pledge thy hand....To you once more I turn,
My children: to instruction were your age
Mature, much admonition on your minds
Would I enforce: but now I can no more
Than pour this pray'r, where'er your lot to live
That happier than your father's be your lives.
Enough of tears: but enter now the house.
