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The Yeats translation formed the basis of the Canadian Stratford Festival production in 1956 under Tyrone Guthrie, who then directed a film adaptation released the following year.
Oedipus. Children, descendants of old Cadmus, why do you come before me, why do you carry the branches of suppliants, while the city smokes with incense and murmurs with prayer and lamentation? I would not learn from any mouth but yours, old man, therefore I question you myself. Do you know of anything that I can do and have not done? How can I, being the man I am, being King Oedipus, do other than all I know? I were indeed hard of heart did I not pity such suppliants.
Priest. Oedipus, King of my country, you can see our ages who are before your door; some it may be too young for such a journey, and some too old, Priests of Zeus such as I, and these chosen young men; while the rest of the people crowd the market-places with their suppliant branches, for the city stumbles towards death, hardly able to raise up its head. A blight has fallen upon the fruitful blossoms of the land.
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"Rambles in New Zealand", an 1841 travelogue by John Carne Bidwill.
Bidwill was one of the first Europeans to travel into the centre of the North Island of New Zealand. As a part of his travels he climbed Mount Ngauruhoe. As the Māori regarded the mountain as tapu he was quite possibly the first person ever to do so. Although primarily a botanist (he later became the first director of Sydney's botanic gardens), in this book he discusses philology, geology and anthropology of the pre-colonisation Māori.
February 6, 2013 is the 173rd anniversary of the foundation of the nation of New Zealand.
I arrived at Sydney in September 1838, and soon received the first of those useful lessons which disappointment teaches. I allude to the system observed in the sale of crown lands, which, instead of being surveyed and ready for auction, so that the emigrant may commence operations with undiminished capital, compels him to waste months in idleness and expense ill adapted to the cultivation and advancement of a new colony. As the spot I had selected was at a considerable distance from Sydney, and the time to be wasted between the application and sale proportionately long, I determined to render it as little irksome and unprofitable as possible by rambling in search of information.
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