Page:Sophocles (Storr 1912) v1.djvu/193

 Plead with you as a daughter’s might.

You are our providence,

O make us not go hence!

O with a gracious nod

Grant us the nigh despaired-of boon we crave!

Hear us, O hear,

By all that ye hold dear,

Wife, children, homestead, hearth and God!

Where will you find one, search ye ne’er so well,

Who ’scapes perdition if a god impel!

Surely we pity thee and him alike

Daughter of Oedipus, for your distress;

But as we reverence the decrees of Heaven

We cannot say aught other than we said.

O what avails renown or fair repute?

Are they not vanity? For, look you, now

Athens is held of States the most devout,

Athens alone gives hospitality

And shelters the vexed stranger, so men say.

Have I so found it? I whom ye dislodged

First from my seat of rock and now would drive

Forth from your land, dreading my name alone;

For me you surely dread not, nor my deeds,

Deeds of a man more sinned against than sinning,

As I might well convince you, were it meet 171