Not emptiness. Walls, towers, and ships, they all

Are nothing with no men to keep the wall.

Oedipus.

Oedipus.

My poor, poor children! Surely long ago

I have read your trouble. Stricken, well I know,

Ye all are, stricken sore: yet verily

Not one so stricken to the heart as I.

Your grief, it cometh to each man apart

For his own loss, none other's; but this heart

For thee and me and all of us doth weep.

Wherefore it is not to one sunk in sleep

Ye come with waking. Many tears these days

For your sake I have wept, and many ways

Have wandered on the beating wings of thought.

And, finding but one hope, that I have sought

vv. 70-86  [Pg 6]

And followed. I have sent Menoikeus' son,

Creon, my own wife's brother, forth alone

To Apollo's House in Delphi, there to ask

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