In breathless quiet after all their ills;
Nor do they see their country, nor the place
Where the Sphinx lived among the frowning hills,
Nor the unhappy palace of their race,
Nor Thebes, nor the Ismenus, any more."[1]
For many months the father, led by the child, had roamed, dependent on the chance liberality of strangers, until they reach the spot where the play opens, the village of Colonus, a mile to the north of Athens, the birthplace of the poet.
And here let us notice the contrast, shown even in the first few lines of the play, between Œdipus the kiug and Œdipus the exile. It is as great as that between Lear in his palace and Lear in the hovel on the heath. The hot and furious temper has been chastened; the proud heart has been humbled in the dust; the spirit which had been so impatient of the advice of Creon and of the warnings of Teiresias—which had thrown impious doubt on the truth of heaven—has been taught a lesson of patience and contentment, as Œdipus says himself, "by his afflictions, by the hand of time, by the force of a noble nature.""Œdipus the Great," as he had proudly termed himself to the admiring Thebans, is no more; and we see instead an aged and sightless exile, clothed in rags, leaning on the arm of his helpless daughter. But he has gained more than he has lost. Those powers of destiny which had tried him, as he thought, with such wanton and relentless cruelty in former days, are changed to benefi-
- ↑ Matthew Arnold's 'Empedocles on Etna.' The liberty has been taken of slightly altering the first few lines.
