OEDIPUS AT COLONUS
For when youth passes with its giddy train,
Troubles on troubles follow, toils on toils,
Pain, pain for ever pain;
And none escapes life’s coils.
Envy, sedition, strife,
Carnage and war, make up the tale of life.
Last comes the worst and most abhorrèd stage
Of unregarded age,
Joyless, companionless and slow,
Of woes the crowning woe.
(Epode)
Such ills not I alone,
He too our guest hath known,
E’en as some headland on an iron-bound shore,
Lashed by the wintry blasts and surge’s roar,
So is he buffeted on every side
By drear misfortune’s whelming tide,
By every wind of heaven o’erborne
Some from the sunset, some from orient morn,
Some from the noonday glow.
Some from Rhipean gloom of everlasting snow.
Antigone
Father, methinks I see the stranger coming,
Alone he comes and weeping plenteous tears.
Oedipus
Who may he be?
Antigone
The same that we surmised.
From the outset—Polyneices. He is here.
