What is unwisdom but the lusting after <br />Longevity: to be old and full of days! <br />For the vast and unremitting tide of years <br />Casts up to view more sorrowful things than joyful; <br />And as for pleasures, once beyond our prime, <br />They all drift out of reach, they are washed away. <br />And the same gaunt bailiff calls upon us all. <br />Summoning into Darkness, to those wards <br />Where is no music, dance, or marriage hymn <br />That soothes or gladdens. To the tenements of Death. <br /> <br />Not to be born is, past all yearning, best. <br />And second best is, having seen the light. <br />To return at once to deep oblivion. <br />When youth has gone, and the baseless dreams of youth, <br />What misery does not then jostle man's elbow, <br />Join him as a companion, share his bread? <br />Betrayal, envy, calumny and bloodshed <br />Move in on him, and finally Old Age-- <br />Infirm, despised Old Age--joins in his ruin, <br />The crowning taunt of his indignities. <br /> <br />So is it with that man, not just with me. <br />He seems like a frail jetty facing North <br />Whose pilings the waves batter from all quarters; <br />From where the sun comes up, from where it sets, <br />From freezing boreal regions, from below, <br />A whole winter of miseries now assails him, <br />Thrashes his sides and breaks over his head.<br /><br />Anthony Evan Hecht<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/chorus-from-oedipus-at-colonos/
