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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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I would myself deliver, so I came With the one thrall who yet is true to me. OEDIPUS Thy valiant brothers, where are they at need? ISMENE They are--enough, 'tis now their darkest hour. OEDIPUS Out on the twain! The thoughts and actions all Are framed and modeled on Egyptian ways. For there the men sit at the loom indoors While the wives slave abroad for daily bread. So you, my children--those whom I behooved To bear the burden, stay at home like girls, While in their stead my daughters moil and drudge, Lightening their father's misery. The one Since first she grew from girlish feebleness To womanhood has been the old man's guide And shared my weary wandering, roaming oft Hungry and footsore through wild forest ways, In drenching rains and under scorching suns, Careless herself of home and ease, if so Her sire might have her tender ministry. And thou, my child, whilom thou wentest forth, Eluding the Cadmeians' vigilance, To bring thy father all the oracles Concerning OEDIPUS, and didst make thyself My faithful lieger, when they banished me. And now what mission summons thee from home, What news, Ismene, hast thou for thy father? This much I know, thou com'st not empty-handed, Without a warning of some new alarm. ISMENE The toil and trouble, father, that I bore To find thy lodging-place and how thou faredst, I spare thee; surely 'twere a double pain To suffer, first in act and then in telling; 'Tis the misfortune of thine ill-starred sons I come to tell thee. At the first they willed To leave the throne to CREON, minded well Thus to remove the inveterate curse of old, A canker that infected all thy race. |
