CHORUS

Can Thebes yet find no peace, nor see A perjod of her misery? What booted brave Menaeteus death, Who gave up his devoted breath To save his Country? what the falls Of all those worthies, whom the walls Of our sad Thebes late trembled at? Bold Capaneus, whose strange fate No human strength, but from above The thunderbolts of armed Jove Could work; the stout Hippomedon, And Meleager's beauteous son; Apollo's sacred Prophet too. Quick to Avernus's forced to go Amphiaraus, to prevent The fates, by his so strange descent Frighting the Ghosts that dwell below. Nor could the fatal sisters know, Before they saw him amongst the dead; That they should cut his vital thread. These, and a thousand worthies more Are fled down to the shades below, And yet the wicked partly of war Does still remain; the Princes are Both yet alive, and yet do hate. What end can be composed by fate? Their hate is impious, but to try The cause, were more impiety. Our fears do still increase, the skies Are filled with nought but prodigies Which woes and ruins do display. I long to hear what fate to day The field affords; relate to us How black so ere and ominous. What guilty hands could act such tragedies? O black family? But yet relate the manner of their death. But did they die Together then. Thebes will, I fear, incur the enmity Of nations by this act, and we shall wish (If Creon so begin his froward reign) the unhappy house of Oedipus again. By what new ways of grief shall we Our widowed losses signify? What strange expression can become A woe so strangely burdensome? No howls, no shreikes, no voice of woe, Not such as widowed turtles show, Nor such as Philomel, when she High seated on a poplar tree, Sends sweet sad notes through the air of night, Wailing the husbandman's despite, That reaved her of her dearest nest. Our lose cannot be so expressed. No, nor by actions, such as are The rending of disheveled hair, Or beating of our breasts; these all No more then death and funeral Can show; but in our husbands we Receive a greater injury Then death had done; the common rite Of funeral barred in despite. Theseus is he, whose warlike hand Defends mankind in every land No less by tyrants feared and known Then was the fair Alcmena's son. It he, whose joust revenging steel Subdued, and made dire Schinis feel The self-fame torture in his death By which he took from others breath, When trees together bowed were, And parted thence again, did tear Poor wretches, but by Theseus he Was forced to taste that Tragedy. 'Twas he alone that did set free Athens from that sad slavery Which Minos fury, for the lose Of his beloved Androgeos, Had brought them to; when w ith clew He scaped the Labyrin , and slew Fierce Minotaurus, that had been The monstrous issue of the Queen Pasiphae, Whom unnatural Prodigious lust had made to fallen Before a Bull; the monster held Both shapes, and her foul gilded revealed. O let that still victorious sword Be now as prosperous, and afford To wicked Creon the joust meed That is deserved for such a deed. But it's against all holy laws To doubt success in such a cause. In which we bend our knnes, release, Oh king, For Thebes, for Aemons sake, that virtuous maid, And to prevent a fierce and cruel war, Vouchsafe to grant our suit, and give us leave To bury those dead Grecians in the field. Thebes humbly bows to mighty Theseus, And lays her crown and seepter at his feet. You have your wish. This carcase shall relate it; do not fear To hear him speak: what herbs have you prepared? Enough; but I to add to these so known And vulgar helps of our great art, have gone, And found such simples, whose concealed aid No witch ere used, or trembling God obeyed. Thessaliaes valleys, Colchos famed shore, Nor Libyan squalid sands with Gorgont gore Bedw'd and sprinkled, never produced juice That could so much enthral the deities. When first I plucked them in yond gloomy vale The furies shreik'd, and Hecate grew pale, As loath to have (in that abhorred ground) The power of simples, and their weakness found. No, no, we scorn the helps of that dark place; Nor is it honour to our art to find, But make a darkness fit to serve our ends. We that can forcea Magic light to glide Through closest vaults, can force in spite of day A missed of night to rise, which all the rays Ofburning Phœbus shall want power to scatter. O would it were not night, but that the sun Road in his height of strength; how proudly then Might we perform our rites, and make it known, We use not nature's darkness but our own. 3. Apply your ointments to the body, whilst I Prepare, and speak a charm shall quickly call the affrighted soul back to his mansion. Sad King of night, whose baleful Monarchy The still repaired ruins of mankind Through every age increase; that greiu'st alone To see the heavenly gods for ever free From death's assaults, and thy subjection. Old formless Chaos, thou that wouldst deface Nature's whole beauty, quite disjoint her fabric, And swallow up in dark confusion Ten thousand world's; thou squalid ferryman Of still Avernus's; thou three-headed porter; You snake-haired sisters, punishers of gilded, As you would gain our aid, or fear our threats, Whip back againeinto this upper world That new-fled soul, which did of late inhabit This pale and ghastly seat, but if in vain On you I call, thou wretched wandering Ghost, Not yet transported over the burning stream, But doomed to exile for and hundred years, If true rewards can tempt thee, once again Enter thy ancient prison, and in lieu Of that shore penance, I will make thee free (Releasing all thy tedious banishment) Of fair Elisium; with such powerful rites I'll give thee burial, as no Magic spells, Nor incantations shall for ever call Thee bakce, nor trouble thine eternal rest. Relate to Creon King of Thebes the fate That shall attend his reign. A feircer war by far now threatens Thebes Then that which old Adrastus with the aid Of all his rash confederates could make. The mighty Theseus, whose all-conquering hand No Kingdom yet with safety could withstand, Armed with a cause, in which the prayers and wish Of nations join, is marching towards us. There's none so fit As old Tiresias, that most holy man, Taught from the gods above, whose words by all Our Theban Princes have been long esteemed As oracles, him Creon will obey. What shall we do to cure this fatal stain Upon our nation? We come too late, nor can this field To us a speaking prophet yield. The carcases, whose cold dead tongues From whole, and yet unperished lungs, Betwixt hell and us should hold commerce, And be the black interpreters Of Stygian counsels to relate The hid decrees of death and fate; Those carcases I say are grown Corrupt, and rotten every one, Their marrow's lost, their moistur's gone, Their Organs parched by the sun, That there the Ghost drawn up from hells Dark entrance, nought, but broken yells, And dismal hizzings can afford, Not one intelligible word. I here have gathered, all in one, The poisonous jelly of the moon, Mixed with sulphur of the night, Libbards bane, and Aconite, Due gathered, ere the morn arose, From nightshade, henbane, Cypress boughs. amongst living creatures I have sought, And from each baneful brood have brought What ere could aid to our work give, Skins stripped from horned snakes alive, The Lynxes bowels, blood of frogs, The Schreichowles eggs, the foam of Dogs, The wings of Bats, with Dragons eyes, The Crows black head, the stone that lies In Eagles nests, and pebbles round, That when the Ocean ebbs are found: There is within Cithaerons hollow side A dark, and squalid cave, where day never peeped, Nor ever light, but light by magic made Shot through that dismal air; pale mouldy filth Bred there by dreary night orespredds the place. The mouth of Taenarus, that baleful bound Betwixt heaven and hell, appears not half so black. To this sad caueth' accustomed fiends ascend, And think themselves still in their proper place. But Ghosts, that newly passed Avernus's lake, Shun the ascent, and though by us invoked, Tremble to enter to that place unknown, And find a hell more horrid then their own. Let's go no further then; this place shall serve. In vain, alas, did we expect and end Of this dire war, when both the princes died, When the Argines fled, must out own victory Become our grief? and draw upon us now A greater ruin then our foil had done? Advise the King Rather to change his purpose, then expose His weakened Kingdom to great Theseus fury. Though he should prove never so obstinate: Better that any one for good advice Should suffer from his fury, then the land In general should smart. Then thither let us, and with him advise How to redress our present Misery's. THat was my fear before, I thought my son Too far in love to bear, with patience, His Ladies death, and therefore did entreat The King with tears, and sighs, that would have moved A rock of flint, but he more hard then rocks, Deafer then Northern winds, with rage repulsed My oft repeated suit, and now, ay e, What most I feared is proved, my son will die; For he has vowed never to pardon her. Nothing but complain. But from this field of slaughter I Have gathered up a treasury, As dead men's limbs wet in the rain, Cold gelled tongues and parched brain, The slime that on black knuckles lies, Shrunk sinews, and congealed eyes, Bit from their fingers nails over grown, And from young chinns pulled springing down. Flesh bit by Wolves I took away, And robbed the vulture of her prey. Where Thebans funeral piles had made, I did the mourning fire invade, And there black rags with ashes filled, And coals on which their fat distilled, I gathered up, and took from thence Half-burnt bones, and Frankincense, And snatched the fatal kindling brand From out the weeping parents hand. Then let us now employ their powerful help. What place do we design for our black work? Then thither let us bear this carcase hence. Could not the actions of great Hercules, Nor Bacchus glorious deeds, which all mankind For ever shall renown, weigh down the crimes Of their unhappy mother's, and such crimes, As only Jove's resistless power could force? It must, it must, since Creons cruelty, Most unexpected, barbarous cruelty Will have it so, o friend, I could believe, Were not the noble Aemon Creons son, And heir apparent to our Diadem, We had been happier far to have been subdued Then brought by victory to such obedience. You counsel well, But who should be the man? When that annoyance shall be vanished quite, The wandering ghosts will still remain, and fright The bafefull place; plowmen shall fear to toil In furrows of this ill-manured soil. This ghostly land of ours perchance shall be Taken for Avernus by posterity, And claimed by Pluto as his monarchy, Where thousand wandering souls together fly. Clear Dirce shall be made the Poets theme, Instead of muddy Styx, whose fatal stream The ghosts so strive to be transported over By churlish Charon to Elysiums shore: And rather then so great and host should seem Exiled from thence, it will be thought by them Another Acheron shall here be made, And they possess their own Elysian shade. By Creons trembling watch I boar This new slain carcase, but before I brought him thence, I griped him round. The filletts of his lungs are found. His vitals all are strong and whole To entertain the wretched soul, Whom forced furies must affright Back from hell to us to night. True friend; there's all out trust, the gods in nought But that brave Princes life, have left us hope Of any future fau r to redress The Misery's, which we so long have felt. But for this imminent, nay present danger What were we best to do? What could the Argolian ghosts, though once our foes, Deserve so much from us, as thus to loose The rites of funeral, which all mankind Justly expect from greatest foes to find? Why should the land that gave them death, deny Them sepulture? pursuing enmity Farther then that? why with so black a stain Dost thou pollute the entrance of thy reign Unhappy Creon, thwarting nature's law, Upon thy self and fatal Thebes to draw The hate and curse of nations, who will make The quarrel theirs; Pluto himself will take Revenge for this great lose, that must befall His Monarchy, whilst these Argolians all Unburied lie, wandering a hundred year Exiled from him for want of sepulcher. Once more let's Trot the fields about To find a fresher carcase out. And speak a charm that may affright All pious love from hence to night, Lest we by funeral rites do lose What Creons cruelty bestows. Thine anger boots not, Creon; it's all one Whither the fire or putrefaction Dissolve them; all to nature's bosom go, And to themselves their ends the bodies owe. If now the Argives bodies be not burned, They shall when earth and seas to flames are turned. Earth will, inspite of thee, receive again What ever she brought forth; and they obtain Heavens coverture, that have no graves at all. Thou that deniest these people funeral, Why dost thou fly those slaughter-smelling fields? Breathe, if thou canst, the air this sad place yields. Those vanquished carcases alone possess The ground, and bar the conquerors access. O smooth thy frown at last, great queen of heaven, Let not unhappy Thebes for ever feel The dire effects of thy too mindful wrath: What could the wretched Semeles offence, Or poor Alemena's error more deserve, Then they themselves have suffered from thy hand? Or if succeeding branches needs must bleed For parents faults, before a goddess wrath Can be appeased, could not Actaeons wounds Athamas madness, Ino's woeful death, Nor pitied Oedipus his fallen suffice? What storm can threaten now? O horrid fight! bright Phaebus hide thy head, Wrap up the day in foggy clouds, and make And endless night, to hide this tragedy From human eyes; a blacker deed then this Thy light did never discover, here let all The prodigies that threatened us, have end.