Sunday, May 19, 2013

Post 5.19.2013.4

Jocasta:  So now I ask what first I wish to know.
What is it to lose your country - a great suffering?
Polyneices:  The greatest, even worse than people say.
Jocasta:  What is its nature?  What so hard on exiles?
Polyneices:  One thing is worst, a man cannot speak out.
Jocasta:  But this is slavery, not to speak one's thought.
Polyneices:  One must endure the unwisdom of one's masters.
Jocasta:  This is also painful, to join with fools in folly.
Polyneices:  One must be a slave, for gain, against one's nature.
Jocasta:  The saying is that exiles feed on hopes.
Polyneices:  Lovely to look at, but the do delay.
Jocasta:  And doesn't time make clear that they are empty?
Polyneices:  The have their charm in troubles.
Jocasta:  How were you fed before your marriage fed you?
Polyneices:  Sometimes I'd have a day's worth, sometimes not.
Jocasta:  Your father's foreign friends, were they no help?
Polyneices:  Hope to be rich!  If you are not - no friends.
Jocasta:  Your high birth brought you to no lordly height.
Polyneices:  Want's the bad thing.  My breeding did not feed me.
Jocasta:  It seems one's country is the dearest thing.
Polyneices:  You couldn't say in words how dear it is.

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