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PinkMonkey.com Digital Library - PinkMonkey.com Digital Library-Sophocles-Oedipus the King by Sophocles


[Exit THESEUS]

CHORUS
(Str.)
Who craves excess of days,

Scorning the common span
Of life, I judge that man
A giddy wight who walks in folly's ways.
For the long years heap up a grievous load,
Scant pleasures, heavier pains,
Till not one joy remains
For him who lingers on life's weary road

And come it slow or fast,

One doom of fate
Doth all await,
For dance and marriage bell,
The dirge and funeral knell.
Death the deliverer freeth all at last.
(Ant.)

Not to be born at all
Is best, far best that can befall,
Next best, when born, with least delay
To trace the backward way.

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 abhorred stage

Of unregarded age,
Joyless, companionless and slow,

Of woes the crowning woe.

(Epode)
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.
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