st 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 repr