OEDIPUS AT COLONUS
Plead with you as a daughter’s might.
You are our providence,
O make us not go hence!
O with a gracious nod
Grant us the nigh despaired-of boon we crave!
Hear us, O hear,
By all that ye hold dear,
Wife, children, homestead, hearth and God!
Where will you find one, search ye ne’er so well,
Who ’scapes perdition if a god impel!
Chorus
Surely we pity thee and him alike
Daughter of Oedipus, for your distress;
But as we reverence the decrees of Heaven
We cannot say aught other than we said.
Oedipus
O what avails renown or fair repute?
Are they not vanity? For, look you, now
Athens is held of States the most devout,
Athens alone gives hospitality
And shelters the vexed stranger, so men say.
Have I so found it? I whom ye dislodged
First from my seat of rock and now would drive
Forth from your land, dreading my name alone;
For me you surely dread not, nor my deeds,
Deeds of a man more sinned against than sinning,
As I might well convince you, were it meet
