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Rh again moralise on the vanity of life; and, like the preacher, they "praise the dead, which are already dead, more than the living, which are yet alive." Who would pray for length of days, which can bring nothing but sorrow? Death, after all, is man's last and best friend:—

And then they point their moral by the fate of Œdipus, thus stricken with age and misery; and possibly, in writing the last lines of the chorus, the poet may have been thinking of his own approaching end:—

Then, with faltering steps and shrinking gesture, Polynices enters; and if eloquent self-reproach and protestations of sorrow could have atoned for years of unfilial insult and neglect, he might have gained his end. He throws himself at his father's feet, and appeals