Page:The Antigone of Sophocles (1911).djvu/25

SOPHOCLES. “Yes, everything in season.”

“Do you know on what condition I will go?”

“Tell me, and then I shall.”

“Send me forth from this land to dwell.”

“You request what the god must grant.”

“But I am an abomination to the gods.”

“Then the favor will be granted soon.”

“You consent ?”

“I never speak in vain what I do not mean.”

“Conduct me then within.”

“Come, let the children go.”

“O take them not from me, not them.”

“Do not yearn to have your way in everything; strong in power you did prevail, but power followed not through life; you see how soon your mightiness met misery.”

Œdipus, Creon, Antigone and Ismene move slowly away, while the leader of the chorus concludes the drama with these words:

Inhabitants of Thebes, look ye, this is Œdipus, who guessed the famous riddle and was a man most high in power; the people envied him in all his pomp and glory, and now behold in what an awful sea of misery submerged. ‘Therefore, never till the final day of all has come, till the goal of life is touched without hurt, deem any living creature happy.

In the Œdipus at Colonus, the blind old man, wedded to calamity and driven from Thebes, accompanied by his faithful Antigone, comes to Athens, where he is hospitably received by Theseus. Ismene arrives from Thebes and tells how her brothers had quarreled for the throne: Eteocles, the younger, had driven out Polyneices, who had fled to Argos, threatening to return with an invading army. Polyneices now enters and implores his father to espouse his cause. But Œdipus prays that his son may never regain the throne, may never return