"Ode to Man"

(sung and danced by the chorus)

from

Sophocles’ ANTIGONE

Many things are awesome, but none more so than man.

Man fares out on the endless sea, riding his craft over high-swelling waves,

          far from the solid land.

He rides mother Earth too, ploughing her year after year,

          forcing her to yield him harvest.

 

Tribes of birds and shaggy beasts, sea-fish teeming under the blue water

Man snares them all by artful guile, makes them all his prey.

Wild leaping horses and mighty, thick-necked steers

          Man breaks beneath his yoke,

          Conquers by his craft and will. 

 

The human shapes swift-minded speech, and politics to make a city,

          Builds stone shelters against frost and the pelting rain.

Ever-contriving, never-resourceless

          The human conquers disease and every misfortune--

          His ambition breaking, only, at relentless death.

 

Inventive, skillful, his thinking more subtle than sight itself

          He turns sometimes to good, sometimes to evil.

High in the city, when honoring its laws

Man becomes city-less, solitary, if he twists them to serve himself

          And spurns the sanctions of holy right;

Let not such a one sit before my hearth,

          Nor join me at my table.