OEDIPUS.
Dread goddesses, of awful countenance,
Since in your holy precincts first I rest,
Be merciful to Phoebus and to me;
For Phoebus, when he all my woes foretold,
Promised me peace at last, then to be mine
When at my wandering's limit I should find
A shrine and hostel of the powers of awe.
Here of my misery was to be the goal,
And I was to bring blessings to my hosts,
And curses upon them that drove me out.
Tokens of this he pledged his word to send,
An earthquake, lightning, or a thunder peal.
Sure then I am that auguries from you,
Who cannot lie, my wandering feet have led
Unto this grove. How should the wayfarer
Else have on you first lighted, like himself,
Untasting of the wine-cup, and have found
This sacred seat unhewn? O goddesses,
Fulfil Apollo's oracles, and grant
Some termination of this weary life,
Unless my sum of pain seems incomplete,
When long unbroken sufferings I have borne.
O daughters dear of immemorial night,
Athens, of cities most illustrious,
That art to the great Pallas dedicate,
Take pity on this ghost of Oedipus;
Once I was not the thing that now I am.
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THE PRAISES OF COLONUS AND ATHENS.
LINES 668-719.
CHORUS.
Of this land of chivalry
Thou the garden here dost see,
White Colonus, in whose glade,
Underneath the greenwood shade,
Her loved haunt, the nightingale
Poureth oft her luscious wail.
Glossy-dark the ivy creeps;
Flourishes along the steeps
With berries store, scorched by no ray,
Rent by no storm, the sacred bay.
Here loves the jolly god to rove
With merry nymphs that round him move.
Here many a flower, heaven-watered, blows,
Worthy to bind immortal brows.
Narcissus waves its clusters gay,
And crocus gleams with golden ray.
Nor do the springs that feed thy flow,
Cephisus, intermission know:
Day after day their crystal stream
Makes the rich loam with plenty teem.
Nor do the muses keep afar,
Nor Aphrodite's golden car.
Here grows, what neither Asia's coast
Nor Pelops' Dorian Isle can boast,
The tree that Nature's bounty rears,
The tree that mocks the foeman's spears,
That nowhere blooms so fair and free
And rich—our own grey olive tree,
Of which no chieftain, old or young,
Shall rob the land from which it sprung.
Blue-eyed Athene is its guard,
And Morian Zeus its sleepless ward.
And loftier still the note of praise
That by the grace of heaven we raise
To this our motherland, for she
Is Queen of steeds, Queen of the sea.
Poseidon, son of Saturn, thou
Didst set this crown upon her brow,
When first upon Athenian course
Thou taughtst to curb the fiery horse.
The dashing oar our seamen ply,
Light o'er the wave our galleys fly,
Keeping the sea-nymphs company.
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