Stasimon 6
[Choral 1]
Oh horror of darkness that enfolds me, unspeakable visitant,
Oedipus
resistless, sped by a wind too favorable! Oh, me! and once again, Oh, me! How my soul is pierced by the stab of these goads and by the memory of sorrows!
1315
Chorus
No wonder that amidst these woes
you mourn and bear a double pain.
1320
Oedipus
Ah, friend, you still are steadfast in your care for me, and still have patience to tend to the blind man! Ah, me!
Your presence is not hidden from me—no, blind though I am, nevertheless I know your voice full well.
1325
Chorus
Man of dread deeds, how could you quench your vision in this way? What divinity urged you on?
[Choral 2]
It was Apollo, friends, Apollo who brought these troubles
Oedipus
to pass, these terrible, terrible troubles. But the hand that struck my eyes was none other than my own, wretched that I am!
1330
Why should I see, when sight showed me nothing sweet?
1335
Chorus
These things were just as you say.
Oedipus
What, my friends, can I behold anymore, what can I love, what greeting can touch my ear with joy? Hurry, friends,
lead me from the land, lead me from here, the utterly lost,
1340
the thrice-accursed, the mortal most hateful to the gods!
1345
Chorus
Wretched alike for your fortune and for your understanding of it, would that I had never known you!
Oedipus
Perish the man, whoever he was, who freed me in the past years from the cruel shackle on my feet—a thankless deed! Had I died then,
I would not have been so sore a grief to my friends and to my own soul.
1355
Chorus
I too would have had it thus.
Oedipus
In this way I would not have come to shed my father’s blood, or been known among men as the husband of the woman from whom I was born.
Now I am forsaken by the gods, son of a defiled mother, successor to the bed of the man who gave me my own wretched being:
1360
if there is a woe surpassing all woes, it has become Oedipus’ lot.
1365