and her sister shall not escape the most wretched fate; for I charge her equally with having planned the measures respecting this burial. And summon her; for just now I saw her within raving, not possessed of her senses; and the mind of those who unjustly devise anything in the dark is wont to be prematurely detected in its fraud. I indeed at least hate when any one, discovered in guilt, may then wish to gloss it over.

ANTIGONE. Do you wish anything more than taking me to put me to death?

all.

CREON. I indeed wish nothing more. Having this I have

ANTIGONE. Why in truth do you delay? since to me none of your words are pleasing, nor may they ever be pleasing; and in like manner also, to you mine are naturally displeasing. And yet whence could I have gained a glory of higher renown than by laying my own brother in the tomb? It would be said that this was approved of by all these, did not fear seal their tongues. But regal power is fortunate in many other things, and in this, that it is allowed to say and to do what it pleases.

CREON. You alone of these Cadmeans view it in this light. ANTIGONE. These also view it in the same light, but for you they close the lips.

CREON. And are not you ashamed if you have sentiments different from theirs?

ANTIGONE. No, for it is nothing shameful to revere those who sprung from the same womb.

CREON. Was not he also your brother who fell on the opposite side?

ANTIGONE. He was my brother from one mother and the same father.

CREON. How then do you award an honor that is impious to him?

ANTIGONE. The dead below the earth will not testify this. CREON. He will, if you honor him equally with the impious.

ANTIGONE. For not in aught a slave, but my brother he fell. CREON. Laying waste at least this land, but the other resisting in its defence.

bad.

ANTIGONE. Still the grave at least desires equal laws. CREON. But not the good to obtain an equal share with the

ANTIGONE. Who knows if these things are held holy below?

CREON. Never at all is the enemy, not even in death, a friend.

ANTIGONE. I have been formed by nature not to join in hatred, but to join in love.

CREON. Going now below, if you must love, love them; but while I live, a woman shall not rule.

CHORUS. And in truth before the gates here comes Ismene, letting fall the tears of a sister's love, and the cloud on her brow, bedewing her beauteous face, mars the glow of her cheek.

CREON. But you, who in my house, like a viper, stealing on without my notice, sucked my blood, and I was not aware that I nursed two fiends and traitors to subvert my throne, come, tell me, do you too confess that you shared in this burial, or do you deny the knowledge of it?

ISMENE. I did the deed, if she also says so, and I participate in and bear the blame.

ANTIGONE. But justice will not permit you to do this, since you neither were willing, nor did I make you my partner.

ISMENE. But in your evils I am not ashamed to make myself a fellow-voyager of your sufferings.

ANTIGONE. Whose deed it is, Hades and those below the earth are conscious; but I do not love a friend that loves with words.

ISMENE. Do not, sister, deprive me of the honor of dying with you, and of paying the rites to the dead.

ANTIGONE. Do not you die along with me, nor make yours what did not touch. I will suffice to die.

you

ISMENE. And what life is dear to me bereft of you?

ANTIGONE. Ask Creon; for you court him.

ISMENE. Why do you pain me with this, being yourself nothing benefited by it?

ANTIGONE. Yet I am grieved, in truth, though I deride you.
ISMENE. In what else could I now benefit you?

ANTIGONE. Preserve youself: I do not grudge your escape. ISMENE. Woe is me unhappy! And do I fail to share your fate?

ANTIGONE. For you indeed choose to live, but I to die. ISMENE. But not at least without my warning being addressed.

ANTIGONE. You seemed wise indeed to some, but I to

others.

ISMENE. And, in truth, the guilt is equal to us.

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ANTIGONE. Be confident; you indeed live, but my soul has long since died, so as to aid the dead.

CREON. I say, as to these two virgins, that the one has just appeared mad, and the other from the time she was first born. ISMENE. For never, O king, does the mind which may have originally sprung remain the same to those in misfortune, but is changed.

CREON. To you, at any rate, it did, when you chose to work evil with the evil.

ISMENE. For how is life to be endured by me alone without

her?

CREON. But do not say her, for she is no longer.

ISMENE. But will you kill the bride of your own son? CREON. For the furrows of other women may be plowed. ISMENE. Not so, at least, as troth was plighted 'twixt him and her.

CREON. I hate bad wives for my sons.

ISMENE. O dearest Hæmon, how your father disallows thee! CREON. You at least give me too much trouble, both you and the marriage you talk of.

ISMENE. What! will you deprive your own son of her? CREON. The grave was destined to put a stop to this marriage.

ISMENE. 'Tis destined, as it seems, that she shall die.

CREON. E'en as thou thinkest, so I. Make no more delay, but conduct her, ye slaves, within; and from this time it is fitting that these women should not be left at liberty, for even the bold fly, when they already see the close of life near.

CHORUS. Blessed are they to whom there is a life that tastes not of misfortune; for to whomsoever their house shall have been shaken by heaven, nought of mischief is wanting, lurking through the fulness of their race; like as when beneath the sea-traversing malignant Thracian blasts a billow runs over the marine darkness, it stirs up from the deep the black and storm-tossed shingle, and the wave-lashed shores moan with the roar. I see the ancient sufferings of the house of Labdacus following on the sufferings of the dead; nor does one generation quit the race, but some one of the gods keeps felling it, nor has it a moment's release. For now what light was spread above the last root in the house of Edipus, again the deathful dust of the infernal powers sweeps it away, and phrensy of words, and the mad fury of the mind. O Jove! what daring

pride of mortals can control thy power, which neither the sleep which leads the universe to old age ever seizes, nor the unwearied months of the gods? Through unwasting time, enthroned in might, thou dwellest in the glittering blaze of heaven! For the future, and the instant, and the past, this law will suffice: nothing comes to the life of mortals far removed at least from calamity. For much-deceitful hope is a gratification to many, and to many the beguilements of lightminded love; but ruin advances on man, all-ignorant, before that he touch his foot with the warm fire. In wisdom hath an illustrious saying been by some one set forth: That evil on a time appears good to him whose mind the god hurries on to judgment, and that he lives for a brief space apart from its visitation.

CHORUS. O Love! unconquerable in the fight. Love! who lightest on wealth, who makest thy couch in the soft checks of the youthful damsel, and roamest beyond the seas, and mid the rural cots, thee shall neither any of the immortals escape, nor of men the creatures of a day; but he that feels thee is that instant maddened. Thou for their ruin seducest the minds of the just to injustice; thou hast stirred up this strife of kindred men, and desire revealed from the eyes of the beauteous bride. wins the victory, desire that holds its seat beside the mighty laws in rule; for the goddess Venus wantons unconquerable among all. But now already I too am borne without the pale of laws, beholding this spectcale; and I am no longer able to restrain the fountains of tears, when I here see Antigone passing on her way to the chamber where all repose.

ROBERT SOUTHEY.

SOUTHEY, ROBERT, an eminent English poet; born at Bristol, August 12, 1774; died at Keswick, March 21, 1843. In 1793 he was entered at Balliol College, Oxford. He was destined for the Church; but he had embraced Unitarian views in religion and left Oxford after a year's residence. In 1795, Southey wrote "Joan of Arc," an epic poem, for which Cottle, a Bristol publisher, paid him fifty guineas.

In 1797, Southey accompanied his uncle, the Reverend Mr. Hill, to the "factory" at Lisbon, Portugal; here he laid the foundation for that intimate acquaintance with the Portuguese and Spanish languages which afterwards served him in good stead. Returning to England, he went to London with the design of studying law; but he devoted himself mainly to literary labor. In 1803, he took up his residence at Greta Hall, near Keswick, in the Lake region. Coleridge was then domiciled there, and Wordsworth lived a few miles distant. These three poets, so dissimilar in genius, came to be popularly designated as "The Lake Poets." From this time the life of Southey lay mainly in his numerous works in prose and verse. In 1813, he succeeded James Pye as Poet Laureate, and was himself succeeded by Wordsworth, and he by Tennyson. In 1835, he was offered a baronetcy, which he declined, for the reason that his means were not adequate to maintain the dignity.

There is scarcely a department in literature in which Southey was not more or less eminent. Besides translations from the Portuguese and Spanish, and frequent contributions to the "Quar terly Review," his principal prose works are "History of Brazil" (1810-19); "Life of Nelson" (1813); "Life of John Wesley" (1820); "History of the Peninsular War" (1823-32); "Book of the Church" (1824); "Sir Thomas More, or Colloquies on Society" (1829); "Essays, Moral and Political" (1831); "Life of John Bunyan" (1830); "The Doctor," a curious mélange (1834-37). His principal poems are "Joan of Arc" (1796); "Thalaba, the Destroyer" (1801); "Madoc" (1805); "Metrical Tales, and Other Poems" (1805); "The Curse of Kehama" (1810); "Roderick, the Last of the Goths" (1814); "A Poet's Pilgrimage to Waterloo" (1816); "The Vision of Judgment," eulogizing George III. (1821. "The Pilgrim of Compostella" (1829).