Then Creon, groaning in the bitterness of his heart, entreats his son to leave the body and to come forth from the ill-omened chamber. Hæmon answers not, but, glaring with angry eyes, draws his sword; and as his father, believing his own life to be threatened, starts back in terror, the unfortunate youth buries the blade in his own body, and falls forwards on the earth, still clasping the dead Antigone:—
"Yet ever, while dim sense
Struggled within the fast-expiring soul,
Feebler and feebler still his stiffening limbs
Clung to that virgin form, and every gasp
Of his last breath with bloody dews distained
The cold white cheek that was his pillow. So
Lies death embracing death."—(Lord Lytton.)[1]
But the doom of the house of Œdipus is not yet consummated. Eurydice had heard to the end the tale of the messenger, and had then rushed into the palace without a word or cry. The Chorus argue the worst from this ominous silence; and their fears are fulfilled, for hardly has Creon again come upon the stage, bearing the dead body of his son in his arms, when he is met by a second messenger with the news that the queen, his wife, has stabbed herself to the heart with a mortal blow.
And here the horror culminates. Nothing can be
- ↑ We are at once reminded of the last scene in 'Romeo and Juliet,' where rescue and explanation come too late to save the lovers, and where the tomb of the Capulets is, as the Friar says, "a nest
"Of death, contagion, and unnatural sleep."
