Stasimon 5
[Episode]
when his shrewdness solved the Sphinx’s unsolvable song and killed that savage singer. Alas for you, father! What other Hellene or barbarian,
1505
Antigone
what mortal from a noble line ever endured the anguish of such visible afflictions?
1510
Ah! poor girl, how piteous is your cry!
What bird, perched on the high-leaved branches of oak or pine, will come to mourn with me, left motherless? With cries of woe,
1515
I lament before it comes the piteous lonely life, that I shall live for the rest of time, in streaming tears. On which of these
1520
shall I throw my offerings first, plucking the hair from my head? on the breast of the mother that suckled me, or beside the ghastly death-wounds of my brothers’ corpses?
1525
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
1530
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?
1535
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
1540
as a dream that flies?
1545
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.
Alas for you, my father!
1550
Oedipus
Alas for my sorrows! I may well groan and cry. Three lives! Tell me, child, by what fate they left the light.
Antigone
I do not say this to reproach or mock you, but in sadness: your own avenging curse, with all its load of swords and fire and ruthless war, came on your sons. Alas for you, my father!
1555
Antigone
Why that groan?
1560
Antigone
You are in pain; but if you could look towards the sun-god’s four-horse chariot and turn the light of your eyes on these corpses—
Oedipus
The evil fate of my sons is clear; but she, my poor wife, tell me, daughter, by what fate did she die?
1565
