Page:Sophocles (Storr 1912) v1.djvu/285

 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.

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.

Father, methinks I see the stranger coming,

Alone he comes and weeping plenteous tears.

Who may he be?

The same that we surmised.

From the outset—Polyneices. He is here. 263