resting thy aged foot upon the couch in a state of misery?

OEDIPUS, CREON, ANTIGONE, CHORUS.

OED. Why, O virgin, hast thou with the most doleful tears called me forth
leaning on the support of a blind foot[50] to the light, a bed-ridden man
from his darksome chamber, gray-headed, an obscure phantom of air--a dead
body beneath the earth--a flitting dream?

ANT. O father, thou shalt receive words of unhappy tidings; no longer do
thy children behold the light, nor thy wife, who ever was employed in
attending as a staff on thy blind foot, my father: alas me!

OED. Alas me, for my sufferings! for well may I groan and vociferate these
things. The three souls, tell me, my child, by what fate, how quitted they
this light?

ANT. Not for the sake of reproaching thee, nor exulting over thee, but for
grief I speak: thy evil genius, heavy with swords, and fire, and wretched
combats, has rushed down upon thy children, O my father.

OED. Alas me! ah! ah!

ANT. Why dost thou thus groan?

OED. Alas me! my children!

ANT. Thou wouldest grieve indeed, if looking on the chariot of the sun
drawn by its four steeds, thou couldest direct the sight of thine eyes to
these bodies of the dead.

OED. The evil of my sons indeed is manifest; but my wretched wife, by what
fate, O my child, did she perish?

ANT. Causing to all tears of grief they could not contain, to her children
she bared her breast, a suppliant she bared it, holding it up in
supplication. But the mother found her children at the Electran gate, in
the mead where the lotus abounds, contending with their lances in the
common war, as lions bred in the same cave, with the blood-wounds now a
cold, a gory libation, which Plato received, and Mars gave. And having
seized the brazen-wrought sword from the dead she plunged it into her
flesh, but with grief for her children she fell amidst her children. But
all these sufferings, O my father, has the God heaped this day upon our
house, whoever he be, that adds this consummation.

CHOR. This day hath been the beginning of many woes to the house of
Oedipus; but may life be more fortunate!

CRE. Now indeed cease from your grief, for it is time to think of the
sepulture. But hear these words, O Oedipus; Eteocles, thy son, hath given
to me the dominion of this land, giving them as a marriage portion to
Haemon, and _with them_ the bed of thy daughter Antigone. I therefore will
not suffer thee any longer to dwell in this land. For cle