Have thankless children and are choleric,
But yielding to persuasion’s gentle spell
They let their savage mood be exorcised. 
Look thou to the past, forget the present, think
On all the woe thy sire and mother brought thee;
Thence wilt thou draw this lesson without fail,
Of evil passion evil is the end. 
Thou hast, alas, to prick thy memory,
Stern monitors, these ever-sightless orbs. 
O yield to us; just suitors should not need
To be importunate, nor he that takes
A favor lack the grace to make return.

Oedipus
Grievous to me, my child, the boon ye win
By pleading.  Let it be then; have your way
Only if come he must, I beg thee, friend,
Let none have power to dispose of me.

Theseus
No need, Sir, to appeal a second time. 
It likes me not to boast, but be assured
Thy life is safe while any god saves mine.
[Exit Theseus]

Chorus
(Str.)
Who craves excess of days,
          Scorning the common span
          Of life, I judge that man
A giddy wight who walks in folly’s ways. 
For the long years heap up a grievous load,
          Scant pleasures, heavier pains,
          Till not one joy remains
For him who lingers on life’s weary road
     And come it slow or fast,
          One doom of fate
          Doth all await,
          For dance and marriage bell,
          The dirge and funeral knell. 
Death the deliverer freeth all at last. 
(Ant.)
          Not to be born at all
          Is best, far best that can befall,
          Next best, when born, with least delay
          To trace the backward way. 
For when youth passes with its giddy train,
     Troubles on troubles follow, toils on toils,
          Pain, pain for ever pain;
          And none escapes life’s coils. 
          Envy, sedition, strife,
Carnage and war, make up the tale of life. 
Last comes the worst and most abhorred stage
          Of unregarded age,
Joyless, companionless and slow,
          Of woes the crowning woe.

(Epode)
Such ills not I alone,
He too our guest hath known,
E’en as some headland on an iron-bound shore,
Lashed by the wintry blasts and surge’s roar,
So is he buffeted on every side
By drear misfortune’s whelming tide,
          By every wind of heaven o’erborne
          Some from the sunset, some from orient morn,
          Some from the noonday glow. 
Some from Rhipean gloom of everlasting snow.

Antigone
Father, methinks I see the stranger coming,
Alone he comes and weeping plenteous tears.

Oedipus
Who may he be?

Antigone
               The same that we surmised. 
From the outset—­Polyneices.  He is here.
[Enter Polyneices]