Jocasta enters from the palace.
Jocasta
Jocasta
Maidens, I hear your Phoenician voice, and my old feet drag their tottering steps. O my son,
[305]
at last after countless days I see your face; throw your arms about your mother's breast, stretch out to me your cheeks and the dark, curly locks of your hair, overshadowing my neck.
[310]
Hail to you! all hail! scarcely here in your mother's arms, beyond hope and expectation. What can I say to you? How in every way, by hands, by words, in the mazy delight
[315]
of the dance, shall I find the pleasure of my former joy? Ah! my son, you left your father's house desolate, when your brother's outrage drove you away in exile.
[320]
Truly you were missed alike by your friends and Thebes. And so I cut my white hair and let it fall for grief, in tears, not clad in robes of white, my son,
[325]
but taking instead these dark rags.