again moralise on the vanity of life; and, like the preacher, they "praise the dead, which are already dead, more than the living, which are yet alive." Who would pray for length of days, which can bring nothing but sorrow? Death, after all, is man's last and best friend:—
"Of all the dreams of bliss that are,
Not to be born is best by far;
Next best, by far the next, for man
To speed as fast as speed he can,
Soon as his eyes have glanced on earth,
To where he was before his birth."
And then they point their moral by the fate of Œdipus, thus stricken with age and misery; and possibly, in writing the last lines of the chorus, the poet may have been thinking of his own approaching end:—
"As billows, by the tempest tossed,
Burst on some wintry northern coast,
So toppling o'er his aged form,
Descends the fury of the storm;
The troublous breakers never rest;
Some from the chambers of the west,
Some from the orient sun, or where
At noon he sheds his angry glare,
Or where the stars, faint twinkling, light
The gloomy length of Arctic night."—(A.)
Then, with faltering steps and shrinking gesture, Polynices enters; and if eloquent self-reproach and protestations of sorrow could have atoned for years of unfilial insult and neglect, he might have gained his end. He throws himself at his father's feet, and appeals
