Compassed with dazzling light,
Throned on Olympus' height,
His front the eternal god uprears,
By toils unwearied, and unaged by years!
Far back through seasons past,
Far on through times to come,
Has been, and still must last,
Sin's never-failing doom:
Doom, whence with countless sorrows rife
Is erring man's tumultuous life.
Some, heeding hope's beguiling voice,
From virtue's pathway rove;
And some, deluded, make their choice
The levities of love.
For well and wisely was it said,
That all, by Heaven to sorrows led,
Perverted by delirious mood,
Deem evil wears the shape of good;
Chase the fair phantom, free from fears,
And waken to a life of tears."—(A.)
Hæmon, Creon's son, betrothed to Antigone—and who is perhaps the only "lover" in all ancient tragedy, so widely different is the Greek drama from our own—comes now to plead for the life of his affianced bride. Then ensues a scene familiar in life and fiction, where two strong wills inevitably clash—the son eager and impassioned, the father hardened by that sense of duty never so keenly felt as when stimulated by a private pique. The first and foremost of all duties in the home and in the state, argues Creon, is obedience. The family must be one—united under the patria potestas. The object of men's prayer for children is, according to Creon, much like that of the Hebrew Psalmist,—that
