[1530]
Oh, oh! Oedipus, my old father with sightless eyes, leave your house, reveal the misery of your life, you who have cast a mist of darkness over your eyes and
[1535]
draw out a weary existence within the house. Do you hear, you who are wandering with old step across the court, or sleeping on your wretched pallet couch?
Oedipus enters from the palace.
Oedipus
Why, daughter,
[1540]
have you dragged me to the light by your piteous tears, supporting my blind footsteps, from the gloom of my bed-chamber, gray-haired, invisible as a phantom of the air, or as a spirit from the world below, or
[1545]
as a dream that flies?
Antigone
Father, there are tidings of sorrow for you to bear; no longer do your sons see the light, or your wife, who would always labor to tend your blind footsteps as with a staff.
[1550]
Alas for you, my father!
Oedipus
Alas for my sorrows! I may well groan and cry. Three lives! Tell me, child, by what fate they left the light.
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Euripides. The Complete Greek Drama, edited by Whitney J. Oates and Eugene O'Neill, Jr. in two volumes. 2. The Phoenissae, translated by E. P. Coleridge. New York. Random House. 1938.
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