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Rh But do I hear them sobbing? Has Creon pitied me and sent my children, my darlings? Has he done this?

. Yes, I ordered it, for I know how greatly you have always loved them.

. Then may you be blessed, and may Heaven be kinder to you than it has been to me. My children, where are you? Come hither—hither—come to the hands of him whose mother was your mother; the hands that put out your father’s eyes, eyes once as bright as your own; his, who understanding nothing, seeing nothing, be­ came your father by her that bore him. I weep when I think of the bitter life that men will make you live, and the days that are to come. Into what company dare you go, to what festival, but that you shall return home from it not sharing in the joys, but bathed in tears. When you are old enough to be married, what man dare face the reproach that must cling to you and to your children? What misery is there lacking? Your father killed his father, he begat you at the spring of his own being, offspring of her that bore him. That is the taunt that would be cast upon you and on the man that you should marry. That man is not alive; my children, you must wither away in barrenness. Ah, son of Menoeceus, listen. Seeing that you are the only father now left to them, for we