Antigone (Scene 4 & Ode 4) Lyrics
**SCENE IV**
CHORAGOS: [*As ANTIGONE enters guarded.*]
But I can no longer stand in awe of this,
Nor, seeing what I see, keep back my tears.
Here is Antigone, passing to that chamber
Where all find sleep at last 660
ANTIGONE: Look upon me, friends, and pity me
Turning back at the night’s edge to say
Good-by to the sun that shines for me no longer;
Now sleepy Death
Summons me down to Acheron,
That cold shore:
There is no bridesong there, nor any music.
CHORUS:
Yet not unpraised, not without a kind of honor,
You walk at last into the underworld;
Untouched by sickness, broken by no sword.
What woman has ever found your way to death?ANTIGONE:
[Antistrophe 1]
How often I have heard the store of Niobe,6
Tantalos’ wretched daughter, how the stone
Clung fast about her, ivy-close: and they say
The rain falls endlessly
And rifting soft snow; her tears are never done.
I feel the loneliness of her death in mine.
CHORAGOS: [*As ANTIGONE enters guarded.*]
But I can no longer stand in awe of this,
Nor, seeing what I see, keep back my tears.
Here is Antigone, passing to that chamber
Where all find sleep at last 660
ANTIGONE: Look upon me, friends, and pity me
Turning back at the night’s edge to say
Good-by to the sun that shines for me no longer;
Now sleepy Death
Summons me down to Acheron,
That cold shore:
There is no bridesong there, nor any music.
CHORUS:
Yet not unpraised, not without a kind of honor,
You walk at last into the underworld;
Untouched by sickness, broken by no sword.
What woman has ever found your way to death?ANTIGONE:
[Antistrophe 1]
How often I have heard the store of Niobe,6
Tantalos’ wretched daughter, how the stone
Clung fast about her, ivy-close: and they say
The rain falls endlessly
And rifting soft snow; her tears are never done.
I feel the loneliness of her death in mine.
CHORUS:
But she was born of heaven, and you
Are woman, woman-born. If her death is yours,
A mortal woman’s, is this not for you
Glory in our world and in the world beyond?
ANTIGONE:
You laugh at me. Ah, friends, friends,
Can you not wait until I am dead? O Thebes,
O men many-charioted, in love with Fortune,
Dear spring of Dirce, sacred Theban grove,
Be witnesses for me, denied all pity,
Unjustly judge! and think a word of love
For her whose path turns
Under dark earth, where there are no more tears.
CHORUS:
You have passed beyond human daring and come at last
Into a place of stone where Justice sits 690
I cannot tell
What shape of your father’s guilt appears in this.
ANTIGONE:
[Antistrophe 2]
You have touched it at last: that bridal bed
Unspeakable, horror of son an mother mingling:
Their crime, infection of all our family!
O Oedipus, father and brother!
Your marriage strikes from the grave to murder mine.
I have been a stranger here in my own land:
All my life
The blasphemy of my birth has followed me.
But she was born of heaven, and you
Are woman, woman-born. If her death is yours,
A mortal woman’s, is this not for you
Glory in our world and in the world beyond?
ANTIGONE:
You laugh at me. Ah, friends, friends,
Can you not wait until I am dead? O Thebes,
O men many-charioted, in love with Fortune,
Dear spring of Dirce, sacred Theban grove,
Be witnesses for me, denied all pity,
Unjustly judge! and think a word of love
For her whose path turns
Under dark earth, where there are no more tears.
CHORUS:
You have passed beyond human daring and come at last
Into a place of stone where Justice sits 690
I cannot tell
What shape of your father’s guilt appears in this.
ANTIGONE:
[Antistrophe 2]
You have touched it at last: that bridal bed
Unspeakable, horror of son an mother mingling:
Their crime, infection of all our family!
O Oedipus, father and brother!
Your marriage strikes from the grave to murder mine.
I have been a stranger here in my own land:
All my life
The blasphemy of my birth has followed me.
CHORUS:
Reverence is a virtue, but strength
Lives in established law: that must prevail.
You have made your choice,
Your death is the doing of your conscious hand.
ANTIGONE:
[Epode]
Then let me go, since all your words are bitter,
And the very light of the sun is cold to me.
Lead me to my vigil, where I must have
Neither love nor lamentation; no song, but silence.
[*CREON interrupts impatiently.*]
CREON:
If dirges and planned lamentations could put of death,
Men would be singing for ever.
[*To the SERVANTS:*]
Take her, go!
You know your orders: take her to the vault
And leave her alone there. And if she lives or dies,
That’s her affair, not ours: our hands are clean.
ANTIGONE:
O tomb, vaulted bride-bed in eternal rock,
Soon I shall be with my own again
Where Persephone
Welcome the thin ghost underground:
And I shall see my father again, and you, mother,
And dearest Polyneices––
Dearest indeed
To me, since it was my hand
That washed him clean and poured the ritual wine:
And my reward is death before my time!
And yet, as men’s hearts know, I have done no wrong,
I have not sinned before God. Or if I have,
I shall know the truth in death. But if the guilt
Lies upon Creon who judged me, then, I pray,
May his punishment equal my own.
Reverence is a virtue, but strength
Lives in established law: that must prevail.
You have made your choice,
Your death is the doing of your conscious hand.
ANTIGONE:
[Epode]
Then let me go, since all your words are bitter,
And the very light of the sun is cold to me.
Lead me to my vigil, where I must have
Neither love nor lamentation; no song, but silence.
[*CREON interrupts impatiently.*]
CREON:
If dirges and planned lamentations could put of death,
Men would be singing for ever.
[*To the SERVANTS:*]
Take her, go!
You know your orders: take her to the vault
And leave her alone there. And if she lives or dies,
That’s her affair, not ours: our hands are clean.
ANTIGONE:
O tomb, vaulted bride-bed in eternal rock,
Soon I shall be with my own again
Where Persephone
Welcome the thin ghost underground:
And I shall see my father again, and you, mother,
And dearest Polyneices––
Dearest indeed
To me, since it was my hand
That washed him clean and poured the ritual wine:
And my reward is death before my time!
And yet, as men’s hearts know, I have done no wrong,
I have not sinned before God. Or if I have,
I shall know the truth in death. But if the guilt
Lies upon Creon who judged me, then, I pray,
May his punishment equal my own.
CHORAGOS:
O passionate heart,
Unyielding, tormented still by the same winds!
CREON:
Her guards shall have good cause to regret their delaying.
ANTIGONE:
Ah! That voice you no reason to think voice of death!
CREON:
I can give you no reason to think you are mistaken.
ANTIGONE:
Thebes, and you my fathers’ gods,
And rulers of Thebes, you see me now, the last
Unhappy daughter of a line of kings,
Your kings, led away to death. You will remember
What things I suffer, and at what men’s hands,
Because I would not transgress the laws of heaven.
[*To the GUARDS, simply:*]
Come: let us wait no longer.
[*Exit ANTIGONE, L., guarded.*]**ODE IV**CHORUS:[Strophe 1]
All Danae’s beauty was locked away
In a brazen cell where the sunlight could not come:
A small room, still as any grave, enclosed her.
Yet she was a princess too,
And Zeus in a rain of gold poured love upon her.
O child, child,
No power in wealth or war
Or tough sea-blackened ships
Can prevail against untiring Destiny![Antistrophe 1]
And Dryas’ son
Also, that furious king,
Bore the god’s prisoning anger for his pride:
Sealed up by Dionysos in deaf stone,
His madness died among echoes.
So at the last he learned what dreadful power
His tongue had mocked:
For he had profaned the revels,
And fired the wrath of the nine
Implacable Sisters
That love the sound of the flute.[Strophe 2]
And old men tell a half-remembered tale
Of horror done where a dark ledge splits the sea
And a double surf beats on the gray shores:
How a king’s new woman, sick
With hatred for the queen he had imprisoned,
Ripped out his two son’s eyes with her bloody hands
While grinning Ares watched the shuttle plunge
Four times: four blind wounds crying for revenge,[Antistrophe 2]
Crying, tears and blood mingled, ––Piteously born,
Those sons whose mother was of heavenly birth!
Her father was the god of the North Wind
And she was cradled by gales,
She raced with young colts on the glittering hills
And walked untrammeled in the open light:
But in her marriage deathless Fate found means
To build a tomb like yours for all her joy.
O passionate heart,
Unyielding, tormented still by the same winds!
CREON:
Her guards shall have good cause to regret their delaying.
ANTIGONE:
Ah! That voice you no reason to think voice of death!
CREON:
I can give you no reason to think you are mistaken.
ANTIGONE:
Thebes, and you my fathers’ gods,
And rulers of Thebes, you see me now, the last
Unhappy daughter of a line of kings,
Your kings, led away to death. You will remember
What things I suffer, and at what men’s hands,
Because I would not transgress the laws of heaven.
[*To the GUARDS, simply:*]
Come: let us wait no longer.
[*Exit ANTIGONE, L., guarded.*]**ODE IV**CHORUS:[Strophe 1]
All Danae’s beauty was locked away
In a brazen cell where the sunlight could not come:
A small room, still as any grave, enclosed her.
Yet she was a princess too,
And Zeus in a rain of gold poured love upon her.
O child, child,
No power in wealth or war
Or tough sea-blackened ships
Can prevail against untiring Destiny![Antistrophe 1]
And Dryas’ son
Also, that furious king,
Bore the god’s prisoning anger for his pride:
Sealed up by Dionysos in deaf stone,
His madness died among echoes.
So at the last he learned what dreadful power
His tongue had mocked:
For he had profaned the revels,
And fired the wrath of the nine
Implacable Sisters
That love the sound of the flute.[Strophe 2]
And old men tell a half-remembered tale
Of horror done where a dark ledge splits the sea
And a double surf beats on the gray shores:
How a king’s new woman, sick
With hatred for the queen he had imprisoned,
Ripped out his two son’s eyes with her bloody hands
While grinning Ares watched the shuttle plunge
Four times: four blind wounds crying for revenge,[Antistrophe 2]
Crying, tears and blood mingled, ––Piteously born,
Those sons whose mother was of heavenly birth!
Her father was the god of the North Wind
And she was cradled by gales,
She raced with young colts on the glittering hills
And walked untrammeled in the open light:
But in her marriage deathless Fate found means
To build a tomb like yours for all her joy.
About
Genius Annotation
Antigone is the chronological end of Sophocles’s Theban Trilogy, after Oedipus Rex (Oedipus the King) and Oedipus at Colonus. While all three plays detail the reign and downfall of Oedipus and his family, it is likely that the were not written as a series, and some scholars believe that Antigone is meant to stand alone or as part of another trilogy entirely.
Antigone is interpreted today as a criticism of gender roles, government intervention in familial matters, and the role of the individual vs. the community.
In Scene 4, Antigone is led to her death as the chorus looks on. The lyrical exchange between the doomed princess and the chorus speak of Antigone’s death as both a fated event and as one that could have easily been prevented if Antigone had obeyed Creon’s orders. Creon himself looks on impatiently, complaining that the guards take too long as they lead Antigone to the cave that will become her tomb.
Q&A
Find answers to frequently asked questions about the song and explore its deeper meaning
- 5.Antigone (Scene 4 & Ode 4)
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