WHERE are we now, my dear Antigone?

Know’st thou the place? Will any here afford

Their scanty alms to a poor wanderer,

The banished Œdipus? I ask not much,

Yet less receive; but I am satisfied:

Long time hath made my woes familiar to me,

And I have learned to bear calamity.

But tell me, daughter, if thou seest a place,

Or sacred or profane, where I may rest,

There set me down, from some inhabitant

A chance but we may learn where now we are,

And act, so strangers ought, as he directs us.

O Œdipus! my poor, unhappy father!

Far as my eyes can reach, I see a city

With lofty turrets crowned, and, if I err not,

This place is sacred, by the laurel shade

Olive and vine thick planted, and the songs

Of nightingales sweet-warbling through the grove;

Here set thee down, and rest thy wearied limbs

On this rude stone; ’t is a long way for age

Like thine to travel.

I ’ll tell thee what I know.

This place is sacred all: great Neptune here

Presides, and he who bears the living fire,

Titan Prometheus; where thou tread’st is called

The brazen way, the bulwark of our state:

From this equestrian hill, their safest guard,

The neighboring villagers their general name

Derive, thence called Colonians all.