CHAPTER IV.

    "So groaning we depart - and when once more 
     We turned our eyes to gaze, behold, the place 
     Knew not the man! The king alone was there, 
     Holding his spread hands o'er averted brows 
     As if to shut from out the quailing gaze 
     The horrid aspect of some ghastly thing 
     That nature durst not look on. So we paused 
     Until the king awakened from the terror, 
     And to the mother Earth, and high Olympus, 
     Seat of the gods, he breathed awe - stricken prayer 
     But, how the old man perished, save the king, 
     Mortal can ne'er divine; for bolt, nor levin, 
     Nor blasting tempest from the ocean borne, 
     Was heard or seen; but either was he rapt 
     Aloft by wings divine, or else the shades, 
     Whose darkness never looked upon the sun, 
     Yawned in grim mercy, and the rent abyss 
     Ingulf'd the wanderer from the living world."

Such, sublime in its wondrous power, its appalling mystery, its dim, religious terror, is the catastrophe of the "Oedipus at Coloneus." The lines that follow are devoted to the lamentations of the daughters, and appear wholly superfluous, unless we can consider that Sophocles desired to indicate the connexion of the "Oedipus" with the "Antigone," by informing us that the daughters of Oedipus are to be sent to Thebes at the request of Antigone herself, who hopes, in the tender courage of her nature, that she may perhaps prevent the predicted slaughter of her brothers.

VII. Coming now to the tragedy of "Antigone," we find the prophecy of Oedipus has been fulfilled - the brothers have fallen by the hand of each other - the Argive army has been defeated - Creon has obtained the tyranny, and interdicts, on the penalty of death, the burial of Polynices, whose corpse remains guarded and unhonoured. Antigone, mindful of her brother's request to her in their last interview, resolves to brave the edict, and perform those rites so indispensably sacred in the eyes of a Greek. She communicates her resolution to her sister Ismene, whose character, still feeble and commonplace, is a perpetual foil to the heroism of Antigone. She acts upon her resolutions, baffles the vigilant guards, buries the corpse. Creon, on learning that his edict has been secretly disobeyed, orders the remains to be disinterred, and in a second attempt Antigone is discovered, brought before him, and condemned to death. Haemon, the son of Creon, had been affianced to Antigone. On the news of her sentence he seeks Creon, and after a violent scene between the two, which has neither the power nor the dignity common to Sophocles, departs with vague menaces. A short but most exquisite invocation to love from the chorus succeeds, and in this, it may be observed, the chorus express much left not represented in the action - they serve to impress on the spectator all the irresistible effects of the passion which the modern artist would seek to represent in some moving scene between Antigone and Haemon. The heroine herself now passes across the stage on her way to her dreadful doom, which is that of living burial in "the cavern of a rock." She thus addresses the chorus -