{"id":23,"date":"2017-06-24T20:36:19","date_gmt":"2017-06-24T20:36:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/suny-geneseo-humanities1-1\/chapter\/oedipus-rex\/"},"modified":"2017-07-20T17:35:59","modified_gmt":"2017-07-20T17:35:59","slug":"oedipus-rex","status":"web-only","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/suny-geneseo-humanities1-1\/chapter\/oedipus-rex\/","title":{"raw":"Oedipus Rex","rendered":"Oedipus Rex"},"content":{"raw":"

ARGUMENT<\/h1>\r\nTo Laius, King of Thebes, an oracle foretold that the child born to him by his queen Jocasta would slay his father and wed his mother. So when in time a son was born the infant's feet were riveted together and he was left to die on Mount Cithaeron. But a shepherd found the babe and tended him, and delivered him to another shepherd who took him to his master, the King of Corinth. Polybus being childless adopted the boy, who grew up believing that he was indeed the King's son. Afterwards doubting his parentage he inquired of the Delphic god and heard himself the word declared before to Laius. Wherefore he fled from what he deemed his father's house and in his flight he encountered and unwillingly slew his father Laius. Arriving at Thebes he answered the riddle of the Sphinx and the grateful Thebans made their deliverer king. So he reigned in the room of Laius, and espoused the widowed queen. Children were born to them and Thebes prospered under his rule, but again a grievous plague fell upon the city. Again the oracle was consulted and it bade them purge themselves of blood-guiltiness. Oedipus denounces the crime of which he is unaware, and undertakes to track out the criminal. Step by step it is brought home to him that he is the man. The closing scene reveals Jocasta slain by her own hand and Oedipus blinded by his own act and praying for death or exile.\r\n\r\n
\r\n\r\n

DRAMATIS PERSONAE<\/h1>\r\n
Oedipus.<\/div>\r\n
The Priest of Zeus.<\/div>\r\n
Creon.<\/div>\r\n
Chorus of Theban Elders.<\/div>\r\n
Teiresias.<\/div>\r\n
Jocasta.<\/div>\r\n
Messenger.<\/div>\r\n
Herd of Laius.<\/div>\r\n
Second Messenger.<\/div>\r\n

Scene: Thebes. Before the Palace of Oedipus.<\/h4>\r\n\r\n
\r\n\r\n

OEDIPUS THE KING<\/h1>\r\n
\r\n\r\nSuppliants of all ages are seated round the altar at the palace doors,\r\n\r\nat their head a PRIEST OF ZEUS. To them enter OEDIPUS.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nMy children, latest born to Cadmus old,\r\n\r\nWhy sit ye here as suppliants, in your hands\r\n\r\nBranches of olive filleted with wool?\r\n\r\nWhat means this reek of incense everywhere,\r\n\r\nAnd everywhere laments and litanies?\r\n\r\nChildren, it were not meet that I should learn\r\n\r\nFrom others, and am hither come, myself,\r\n\r\nI Oedipus, your world-renowned king.\r\n\r\nHo! aged sire, whose venerable locks\r\n\r\nProclaim thee spokesman of this company,\r\n\r\nExplain your mood and purport. Is it dread\r\n\r\nOf ill that moves you or a boon ye crave?\r\n\r\nMy zeal in your behalf ye cannot doubt;\r\n\r\nRuthless indeed were I and obdurate\r\n\r\nIf such petitioners as you I spurned.\r\n

PRIEST<\/h3>\r\nYea, Oedipus, my sovereign lord and king,\r\n\r\nThou seest how both extremes of age besiege\r\n\r\nThy palace altars\u2014fledglings hardly winged,\r\n\r\nand greybeards bowed with years; priests, as am I\r\n\r\nof Zeus, and these the flower of our youth.\r\n\r\nMeanwhile, the common folk, with wreathed boughs\r\n\r\nCrowd our two market-places, or before\r\n\r\nBoth shrines of Pallas congregate, or where\r\n\r\nIsmenus gives his oracles by fire.\r\n\r\nFor, as thou seest thyself, our ship of State,\r\n\r\nSore buffeted, can no more lift her head,\r\n\r\nFoundered beneath a weltering surge of blood.\r\n\r\nA blight is on our harvest in the ear,\r\n\r\nA blight upon the grazing flocks and herds,\r\n\r\nA blight on wives in travail; and withal\r\n\r\nArmed with his blazing torch the God of Plague\r\n\r\nHath swooped upon our city emptying\r\n\r\nThe house of Cadmus, and the murky realm\r\n\r\nOf Pluto is full fed with groans and tears.\r\n\r\nTherefore, O King, here at thy hearth we sit,\r\n\r\nI and these children; not as deeming thee\r\n\r\nA new divinity, but the first of men;\r\n\r\nFirst in the common accidents of life,\r\n\r\nAnd first in visitations of the Gods.\r\n\r\nArt thou not he who coming to the town\r\n\r\nof Cadmus freed us from the tax we paid\r\n\r\nTo the fell songstress? Nor hadst thou received\r\n\r\nPrompting from us or been by others schooled;\r\n\r\nNo, by a god inspired (so all men deem,\r\n\r\nAnd testify) didst thou renew our life.\r\n\r\nAnd now, O Oedipus, our peerless king,\r\n\r\nAll we thy votaries beseech thee, find\r\n\r\nSome succor, whether by a voice from heaven\r\n\r\nWhispered, or haply known by human wit.\r\n\r\nTried counselors, methinks, are aptest found 1<\/a>To furnish for the future pregnant rede.\r\n\r\nUpraise, O chief of men, upraise our State!\r\n\r\nLook to thy laurels! for thy zeal of yore\r\n\r\nOur country's savior thou art justly hailed:\r\n\r\nO never may we thus record thy reign:\u2014\r\n\r\n\"He raised us up only to cast us down.\"\r\n\r\nUplift us, build our city on a rock.\r\n\r\nThy happy star ascendant brought us luck,\r\n\r\nO let it not decline! If thou wouldst rule\r\n\r\nThis land, as now thou reignest, better sure\r\n\r\nTo rule a peopled than a desert realm.\r\n\r\nNor battlements nor galleys aught avail,\r\n\r\nIf men to man and guards to guard them tail.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nAh! my poor children, known, ah, known too well,\r\n\r\nThe quest that brings you hither and your need.\r\n\r\nYe sicken all, well wot I, yet my pain,\r\n\r\nHow great soever yours, outtops it all.\r\n\r\nYour sorrow touches each man severally,\r\n\r\nHim and none other, but I grieve at once\r\n\r\nBoth for the general and myself and you.\r\n\r\nTherefore ye rouse no sluggard from day-dreams.\r\n\r\nMany, my children, are the tears I've wept,\r\n\r\nAnd threaded many a maze of weary thought.\r\n\r\nThus pondering one clue of hope I caught,\r\n\r\nAnd tracked it up; I have sent Menoeceus' son,\r\n\r\nCreon, my consort's brother, to inquire\r\n\r\nOf Pythian Phoebus at his Delphic shrine,\r\n\r\nHow I might save the State by act or word.\r\n\r\nAnd now I reckon up the tale of days\r\n\r\nSince he set forth, and marvel how he fares.\r\n\r\n'Tis strange, this endless tarrying, passing strange.\r\n\r\nBut when he comes, then I were base indeed,\r\n\r\nIf I perform not all the god declares.\r\n

PRIEST<\/h3>\r\nThy words are well timed; even as thou speakest\r\n\r\nThat shouting tells me Creon is at hand.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nO King Apollo! may his joyous looks\r\n\r\nBe presage of the joyous news he brings!\r\n

PRIEST<\/h3>\r\nAs I surmise, 'tis welcome; else his head\r\n\r\nHad scarce been crowned with berry-laden bays.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nWe soon shall know; he's now in earshot range.\r\n\r\n[Enter CREON]\r\n\r\nMy royal cousin, say, Menoeceus' child,\r\n\r\nWhat message hast thou brought us from the god?\r\n

CREON<\/h3>\r\nGood news, for e'en intolerable ills,\r\n\r\nFinding right issue, tend to naught but good.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nHow runs the oracle? thus far thy words\r\n\r\nGive me no ground for confidence or fear.\r\n

CREON<\/h3>\r\nIf thou wouldst hear my message publicly,\r\n\r\nI'll tell thee straight, or with thee pass within.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nSpeak before all; the burden that I bear\r\n\r\nIs more for these my subjects than myself.\r\n

CREON<\/h3>\r\nLet me report then all the god declared.\r\n\r\nKing Phoebus bids us straitly extirpate\r\n\r\nA fell pollution that infests the land,\r\n\r\nAnd no more harbor an inveterate sore.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nWhat expiation means he? What's amiss?\r\n

CREON<\/h3>\r\nBanishment, or the shedding blood for blood.\r\n\r\nThis stain of blood makes shipwreck of our state.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nWhom can he mean, the miscreant thus denounced?\r\n

CREON<\/h3>\r\nBefore thou didst assume the helm of State,\r\n\r\nThe sovereign of this land was Laius.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nI heard as much, but never saw the man.\r\n

CREON<\/h3>\r\nHe fell; and now the god's command is plain:\r\n\r\nPunish his takers-off, whoe'er they be.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nWhere are they? Where in the wide world to find\r\n\r\nThe far, faint traces of a bygone crime?\r\n

CREON<\/h3>\r\nIn this land, said the god; \"who seeks shall find;\r\n\r\nWho sits with folded hands or sleeps is blind.\"\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nWas he within his palace, or afield,\r\n\r\nOr traveling, when Laius met his fate?\r\n

CREON<\/h3>\r\nAbroad; he started, so he told us, bound\r\n\r\nFor Delphi, but he never thence returned.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nCame there no news, no fellow-traveler\r\n\r\nTo give some clue that might be followed up?\r\n

CREON<\/h3>\r\nBut one escape, who flying for dear life,\r\n\r\nCould tell of all he saw but one thing sure.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nAnd what was that? One clue might lead us far,\r\n\r\nWith but a spark of hope to guide our quest.\r\n

CREON<\/h3>\r\nRobbers, he told us, not one bandit but\r\n\r\nA troop of knaves, attacked and murdered him.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nDid any bandit dare so bold a stroke,\r\n\r\nUnless indeed he were suborned from Thebes?\r\n

CREON<\/h3>\r\nSo 'twas surmised, but none was found to avenge\r\n\r\nHis murder mid the trouble that ensued.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nWhat trouble can have hindered a full quest,\r\n\r\nWhen royalty had fallen thus miserably?\r\n

CREON<\/h3>\r\nThe riddling Sphinx compelled us to let slide\r\n\r\nThe dim past and attend to instant needs.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nWell, I<\/i> will start afresh and once again\r\n\r\nMake dark things clear. Right worthy the concern\r\n\r\nOf Phoebus, worthy thine too, for the dead;\r\n\r\nI also, as is meet, will lend my aid\r\n\r\nTo avenge this wrong to Thebes and to the god.\r\n\r\nNot for some far-off kinsman, but myself,\r\n\r\nShall I expel this poison in the blood;\r\n\r\nFor whoso slew that king might have a mind\r\n\r\nTo strike me too with his assassin hand.\r\n\r\nTherefore in righting him I serve myself.\r\n\r\nUp, children, haste ye, quit these altar stairs,\r\n\r\nTake hence your suppliant wands, go summon hither\r\n\r\nThe Theban commons. With the god's good help\r\n\r\nSuccess is sure; 'tis ruin if we fail.\r\n\r\n[Exeunt OEDIPUS and CREON]\r\n

PRIEST<\/h3>\r\nCome, children, let us hence; these gracious words\r\n\r\nForestall the very purpose of our suit.\r\n\r\nAnd may the god who sent this oracle\r\n\r\nSave us withal and rid us of this pest.\r\n\r\n[Exeunt PRIEST and SUPPLIANTS]\r\n

CHORUS<\/h3>\r\n(Str. 1)\r\n\r\nSweet-voiced daughter of Zeus from thy gold-paved Pythian shrine\r\n\r\nWafted to Thebes divine,\r\n\r\nWhat dost thou bring me? My soul is racked and shivers with fear.\r\n\r\n(Healer of Delos, hear!)\r\n\r\nHast thou some pain unknown before,\r\n\r\nOr with the circling years renewest a penance of yore?\r\n\r\nOffspring of golden Hope, thou voice immortal, O tell me.\r\n\r\n(Ant. 1)\r\n\r\nFirst on Athene I call; O Zeus-born goddess, defend!\r\n\r\nGoddess and sister, befriend,\r\n\r\nArtemis, Lady of Thebes, high-throned in the midst of our mart!\r\n\r\nLord of the death-winged dart! Your threefold aid I crave From death and ruin our city to save.\r\n\r\nIf in the days of old when we nigh had perished, ye drave\r\n\r\nFrom our land the fiery plague, be near us now and defend us!\r\n\r\n(Str. 2) Ah me, what countless woes are mine! All our host is in decline; Weaponless my spirit lies. Earth her gracious fruits denies; Women wail in barren throes; Life on life downstriken goes, Swifter than the wind bird's flight, Swifter than the Fire-God's might, To the westering shores of Night. (Ant. 2) Wasted thus by death on death All our city perisheth. Corpses spread infection round; None to tend or mourn is found. Wailing on the altar stair Wives and grandams rend the air\u2014 Long-drawn moans and piercing cries Blent with prayers and litanies. Golden child of Zeus, O hear Let thine angel face appear! (Str. 3)\r\n\r\nAnd grant that Ares whose hot breath I feel,\r\n\r\nThough without targe or steel\r\n\r\nHe stalks, whose voice is as the battle shout,\r\n\r\nMay turn in sudden rout,\r\n\r\nTo the unharbored Thracian waters sped,\r\n\r\nOr Amphitrite's bed. For what night leaves undone, Smit by the morrow's sun\r\n\r\nPerisheth. Father Zeus, whose hand\r\n\r\nDoth wield the lightning brand,\r\n\r\nSlay him beneath thy levin bold, we pray,\r\n\r\nSlay him, O slay! (Ant. 3)\r\n\r\nO that thine arrows too, Lycean King,\r\n\r\nFrom that taut bow's gold string,\r\n\r\nMight fly abroad, the champions of our rights;\r\n\r\nYea, and the flashing lights\r\n\r\nOf Artemis, wherewith the huntress sweeps\r\n\r\nAcross the Lycian steeps.\r\n\r\nThee too I call with golden-snooded hair,\r\n\r\nWhose name our land doth bear,\r\n\r\nBacchus to whom thy Maenads Evoe shout;\r\n\r\nCome with thy bright torch, rout, Blithe god whom we adore, The god whom gods abhor. [Enter OEDIPUS.]\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nYe pray; 'tis well, but would ye hear my words\r\n\r\nAnd heed them and apply the remedy,\r\n\r\nYe might perchance find comfort and relief.\r\n\r\nMind you, I speak as one who comes a stranger\r\n\r\nTo this report, no less than to the crime;\r\n\r\nFor how unaided could I track it far\r\n\r\nWithout a clue? Which lacking (for too late\r\n\r\nWas I enrolled a citizen of Thebes)\r\n\r\nThis proclamation I address to all:\u2014\r\n\r\nThebans, if any knows the man by whom\r\n\r\nLaius, son of Labdacus, was slain,\r\n\r\nI summon him to make clean shrift to me.\r\n\r\nAnd if he shrinks, let him reflect that thus\r\n\r\nConfessing he shall 'scape the capital charge;\r\n\r\nFor the worst penalty that shall befall him\r\n\r\nIs banishment\u2014unscathed he shall depart.\r\n\r\nBut if an alien from a foreign land\r\n\r\nBe known to any as the murderer,\r\n\r\nLet him who knows speak out, and he shall have\r\n\r\nDue recompense from me and thanks to boot.\r\n\r\nBut if ye still keep silence, if through fear\r\n\r\nFor self or friends ye disregard my hest,\r\n\r\nHear what I then resolve; I lay my ban\r\n\r\nOn the assassin whosoe'er he be.\r\n\r\nLet no man in this land, whereof I hold\r\n\r\nThe sovereign rule, harbor or speak to him;\r\n\r\nGive him no part in prayer or sacrifice\r\n\r\nOr lustral rites, but hound him from your homes.\r\n\r\nFor this is our defilement, so the god\r\n\r\nHath lately shown to me by oracles.\r\n\r\nThus as their champion I maintain the cause\r\n\r\nBoth of the god and of the murdered King.\r\n\r\nAnd on the murderer this curse I lay\r\n\r\n(On him and all the partners in his guilt):\u2014\r\n\r\nWretch, may he pine in utter wretchedness!\r\n\r\nAnd for myself, if with my privity\r\n\r\nHe gain admittance to my hearth, I pray\r\n\r\nThe curse I laid on others fall on me.\r\n\r\nSee that ye give effect to all my hest,\r\n\r\nFor my sake and the god's and for our land,\r\n\r\nA desert blasted by the wrath of heaven.\r\n\r\nFor, let alone the god's express command,\r\n\r\nIt were a scandal ye should leave unpurged\r\n\r\nThe murder of a great man and your king,\r\n\r\nNor track it home. And now that I am lord,\r\n\r\nSuccessor to his throne, his bed, his wife,\r\n\r\n(And had he not been frustrate in the hope\r\n\r\nOf issue, common children of one womb\r\n\r\nHad forced a closer bond twixt him and me,\r\n\r\nBut Fate swooped down upon him), therefore I\r\n\r\nHis blood-avenger will maintain his cause\r\n\r\nAs though he were my sire, and leave no stone\r\n\r\nUnturned to track the assassin or avenge\r\n\r\nThe son of Labdacus, of Polydore,\r\n\r\nOf Cadmus, and Agenor first of the race.\r\n\r\nAnd for the disobedient thus I pray:\r\n\r\nMay the gods send them neither timely fruits\r\n\r\nOf earth, nor teeming increase of the womb,\r\n\r\nBut may they waste and pine, as now they waste,\r\n\r\nAye and worse stricken; but to all of you,\r\n\r\nMy loyal subjects who approve my acts,\r\n\r\nMay Justice, our ally, and all the gods\r\n\r\nBe gracious and attend you evermore.\r\n

CHORUS<\/h3>\r\nThe oath thou profferest, sire, I take and swear.\r\n\r\nI slew him not myself, nor can I name\r\n\r\nThe slayer. For the quest, 'twere well, methinks\r\n\r\nThat Phoebus, who proposed the riddle, himself\r\n\r\nShould give the answer\u2014who the murderer was.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nWell argued; but no living man can hope\r\n\r\nTo force the gods to speak against their will.\r\n

CHORUS<\/h3>\r\nMay I then say what seems next best to me?\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nAye, if there be a third best, tell it too.\r\n

CHORUS<\/h3>\r\nMy liege, if any man sees eye to eye\r\n\r\nWith our lord Phoebus, 'tis our prophet, lord\r\n\r\nTeiresias; he of all men best might guide\r\n\r\nA searcher of this matter to the light.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nHere too my zeal has nothing lagged, for twice\r\n\r\nAt Creon's instance have I sent to fetch him,\r\n\r\nAnd long I marvel why he is not here.\r\n

CHORUS<\/h3>\r\nI mind me too of rumors long ago\u2014\r\n\r\nMere gossip.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nTell them, I would fain know all.\r\n

CHORUS<\/h3>\r\n'Twas said he fell by travelers.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nSo I heard,\r\n\r\nBut none has seen the man who saw him fall.\r\n

CHORUS<\/h3>\r\nWell, if he knows what fear is, he will quail\r\n\r\nAnd flee before the terror of thy curse.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nWords scare not him who blenches not at deeds.\r\n

CHORUS<\/h3>\r\nBut here is one to arraign him. Lo, at length\r\n\r\nThey bring the god-inspired seer in whom\r\n\r\nAbove all other men is truth inborn.\r\n\r\n[Enter TEIRESIAS, led by a boy.]\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nTeiresias, seer who comprehendest all,\r\n\r\nLore of the wise and hidden mysteries,\r\n\r\nHigh things of heaven and low things of the earth,\r\n\r\nThou knowest, though thy blinded eyes see naught,\r\n\r\nWhat plague infects our city; and we turn\r\n\r\nTo thee, O seer, our one defense and shield.\r\n\r\nThe purport of the answer that the God\r\n\r\nReturned to us who sought his oracle,\r\n\r\nThe messengers have doubtless told thee\u2014how\r\n\r\nOne course alone could rid us of the pest,\r\n\r\nTo find the murderers of Laius,\r\n\r\nAnd slay them or expel them from the land.\r\n\r\nTherefore begrudging neither augury\r\n\r\nNor other divination that is thine,\r\n\r\nO save thyself, thy country, and thy king,\r\n\r\nSave all from this defilement of blood shed.\r\n\r\nOn thee we rest. This is man's highest end,\r\n\r\nTo others' service all his powers to lend.\r\n

TEIRESIAS<\/h3>\r\nAlas, alas, what misery to be wise\r\n\r\nWhen wisdom profits nothing! This old lore\r\n\r\nI had forgotten; else I were not here.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nWhat ails thee? Why this melancholy mood?\r\n

TEIRESIAS<\/h3>\r\nLet me go home; prevent me not; 'twere best\r\n\r\nThat thou shouldst bear thy burden and I mine.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nFor shame! no true-born Theban patriot\r\n\r\nWould thus withhold the word of prophecy.\r\n

TEIRESIAS<\/h3>\r\nThy<\/i> words, O king, are wide of the mark, and I\r\n\r\nFor fear lest I too trip like thee...\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nOh speak,\r\n\r\nWithhold not, I adjure thee, if thou know'st,\r\n\r\nThy knowledge. We are all thy suppliants.\r\n

TEIRESIAS<\/h3>\r\nAye, for ye all are witless, but my voice\r\n\r\nWill ne'er reveal my miseries\u2014or thine. 2<\/a>\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nWhat then, thou knowest, and yet willst not speak!\r\n\r\nWouldst thou betray us and destroy the State?\r\n

TEIRESIAS<\/h3>\r\nI will not vex myself nor thee. Why ask\r\n\r\nThus idly what from me thou shalt not learn?\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nMonster! thy silence would incense a flint.\r\n\r\nWill nothing loose thy tongue? Can nothing melt thee,\r\n\r\nOr shake thy dogged taciturnity?\r\n

TEIRESIAS<\/h3>\r\nThou blam'st my mood and seest not thine own\r\n\r\nWherewith thou art mated; no, thou taxest me.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nAnd who could stay his choler when he heard\r\n\r\nHow insolently thou dost flout the State?\r\n

TEIRESIAS<\/h3>\r\nWell, it will come what will, though I be mute.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nSince come it must, thy duty is to tell me.\r\n

TEIRESIAS<\/h3>\r\nI have no more to say; storm as thou willst,\r\n\r\nAnd give the rein to all thy pent-up rage.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nYea, I am wroth, and will not stint my words,\r\n\r\nBut speak my whole mind. Thou methinks thou art he,\r\n\r\nWho planned the crime, aye, and performed it too,\r\n\r\nAll save the assassination; and if thou\r\n\r\nHadst not been blind, I had been sworn to boot\r\n\r\nThat thou alone didst do the bloody deed.\r\n

TEIRESIAS<\/h3>\r\nIs it so? Then I charge thee to abide\r\n\r\nBy thine own proclamation; from this day\r\n\r\nSpeak not to these or me. Thou art the man,\r\n\r\nThou the accursed polluter of this land.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nVile slanderer, thou blurtest forth these taunts,\r\n\r\nAnd think'st forsooth as seer to go scot free.\r\n

TEIRESIAS<\/h3>\r\nYea, I am free, strong in the strength of truth.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nWho was thy teacher? not methinks thy art.\r\n

TEIRESIAS<\/h3>\r\nThou, goading me against my will to speak.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nWhat speech? repeat it and resolve my doubt.\r\n

TEIRESIAS<\/h3>\r\nDidst miss my sense wouldst thou goad me on?\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nI but half caught thy meaning; say it again.\r\n

TEIRESIAS<\/h3>\r\nI say thou art the murderer of the man\r\n\r\nWhose murderer thou pursuest.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nThou shalt rue it\r\n\r\nTwice to repeat so gross a calumny.\r\n

TEIRESIAS<\/h3>\r\nMust I say more to aggravate thy rage?\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nSay all thou wilt; it will be but waste of breath.\r\n

TEIRESIAS<\/h3>\r\nI say thou livest with thy nearest kin\r\n\r\nIn infamy, unwitting in thy shame.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nThink'st thou for aye unscathed to wag thy tongue?\r\n

TEIRESIAS<\/h3>\r\nYea, if the might of truth can aught prevail.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nWith other men, but not with thee, for thou\r\n\r\nIn ear, wit, eye, in everything art blind.\r\n

TEIRESIAS<\/h3>\r\nPoor fool to utter gibes at me which all\r\n\r\nHere present will cast back on thee ere long.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nOffspring of endless Night, thou hast no power\r\n\r\nO'er me or any man who sees the sun.\r\n

TEIRESIAS<\/h3>\r\nNo, for thy weird is not to fall by me.\r\n\r\nI leave to Apollo what concerns the god.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nIs this a plot of Creon, or thine own?\r\n

TEIRESIAS<\/h3>\r\nNot Creon, thou thyself art thine own bane.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nO wealth and empiry and skill by skill\r\n\r\nOutwitted in the battlefield of life,\r\n\r\nWhat spite and envy follow in your train!\r\n\r\nSee, for this crown the State conferred on me.\r\n\r\nA gift, a thing I sought not, for this crown\r\n\r\nThe trusty Creon, my familiar friend,\r\n\r\nHath lain in wait to oust me and suborned\r\n\r\nThis mountebank, this juggling charlatan,\r\n\r\nThis tricksy beggar-priest, for gain alone\r\n\r\nKeen-eyed, but in his proper art stone-blind.\r\n\r\nSay, sirrah, hast thou ever proved thyself\r\n\r\nA prophet? When the riddling Sphinx was here\r\n\r\nWhy hadst thou no deliverance for this folk?\r\n\r\nAnd yet the riddle was not to be solved\r\n\r\nBy guess-work but required the prophet's art;\r\n\r\nWherein thou wast found lacking; neither birds\r\n\r\nNor sign from heaven helped thee, but I<\/i> came,\r\n\r\nThe simple Oedipus; I<\/i> stopped her mouth\r\n\r\nBy mother wit, untaught of auguries.\r\n\r\nThis is the man whom thou wouldst undermine,\r\n\r\nIn hope to reign with Creon in my stead.\r\n\r\nMethinks that thou and thine abettor soon\r\n\r\nWill rue your plot to drive the scapegoat out.\r\n\r\nThank thy grey hairs that thou hast still to learn\r\n\r\nWhat chastisement such arrogance deserves.\r\n

CHORUS<\/h3>\r\nTo us it seems that both the seer and thou,\r\n\r\nO Oedipus, have spoken angry words.\r\n\r\nThis is no time to wrangle but consult\r\n\r\nHow best we may fulfill the oracle.\r\n

TEIRESIAS<\/h3>\r\nKing as thou art, free speech at least is mine\r\n\r\nTo make reply; in this I am thy peer.\r\n\r\nI own no lord but Loxias; him I serve\r\n\r\nAnd ne'er can stand enrolled as Creon's man.\r\n\r\nThus then I answer: since thou hast not spared\r\n\r\nTo twit me with my blindness\u2014thou hast eyes,\r\n\r\nYet see'st not in what misery thou art fallen,\r\n\r\nNor where thou dwellest nor with whom for mate.\r\n\r\nDost know thy lineage? Nay, thou know'st it not,\r\n\r\nAnd all unwitting art a double foe\r\n\r\nTo thine own kin, the living and the dead;\r\n\r\nAye and the dogging curse of mother and sire\r\n\r\nOne day shall drive thee, like a two-edged sword,\r\n\r\nBeyond our borders, and the eyes that now\r\n\r\nSee clear shall henceforward endless night.\r\n\r\nAh whither shall thy bitter cry not reach,\r\n\r\nWhat crag in all Cithaeron but shall then\r\n\r\nReverberate thy wail, when thou hast found\r\n\r\nWith what a hymeneal thou wast borne\r\n\r\nHome, but to no fair haven, on the gale!\r\n\r\nAye, and a flood of ills thou guessest not\r\n\r\nShall set thyself and children in one line.\r\n\r\nFlout then both Creon and my words, for none\r\n\r\nOf mortals shall be striken worse than thou.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nMust I endure this fellow's insolence?\r\n\r\nA murrain on thee! Get thee hence! Begone\r\n\r\nAvaunt! and never cross my threshold more.\r\n

TEIRESIAS<\/h3>\r\nI ne'er had come hadst thou not bidden me.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nI know not thou wouldst utter folly, else\r\n\r\nLong hadst thou waited to be summoned here.\r\n

TEIRESIAS<\/h3>\r\nSuch am I\u2014as it seems to thee a fool,\r\n\r\nBut to the parents who begat thee, wise.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nWhat sayest thou\u2014\"parents\"? Who begat me, speak?\r\n

TEIRESIAS<\/h3>\r\nThis day shall be thy birth-day, and thy grave.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nThou lov'st to speak in riddles and dark words.\r\n

TEIRESIAS<\/h3>\r\nIn reading riddles who so skilled as thou?\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nTwit me with that wherein my greatness lies.\r\n

TEIRESIAS<\/h3>\r\nAnd yet this very greatness proved thy bane.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nNo matter if I saved the commonwealth.\r\n

TEIRESIAS<\/h3>\r\n'Tis time I left thee. Come, boy, take me home.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nAye, take him quickly, for his presence irks\r\n\r\nAnd lets me; gone, thou canst not plague me more.\r\n

TEIRESIAS<\/h3>\r\nI go, but first will tell thee why I came.\r\n\r\nThy frown I dread not, for thou canst not harm me.\r\n\r\nHear then: this man whom thou hast sought to arrest\r\n\r\nWith threats and warrants this long while, the wretch\r\n\r\nWho murdered Laius\u2014that man is here.\r\n\r\nHe passes for an alien in the land\r\n\r\nBut soon shall prove a Theban, native born.\r\n\r\nAnd yet his fortune brings him little joy;\r\n\r\nFor blind of seeing, clad in beggar's weeds,\r\n\r\nFor purple robes, and leaning on his staff,\r\n\r\nTo a strange land he soon shall grope his way.\r\n\r\nAnd of the children, inmates of his home,\r\n\r\nHe shall be proved the brother and the sire,\r\n\r\nOf her who bare him son and husband both,\r\n\r\nCo-partner, and assassin of his sire.\r\n\r\nGo in and ponder this, and if thou find\r\n\r\nThat I have missed the mark, henceforth declare\r\n\r\nI have no wit nor skill in prophecy.\r\n\r\n[Exeunt TEIRESIAS and OEDIPUS]\r\n

CHORUS<\/h3>\r\n(Str. 1)\r\n\r\nWho is he by voice immortal named from Pythia's rocky cell,\r\n\r\nDoer of foul deeds of bloodshed, horrors that no tongue can tell?\r\n\r\nA foot for flight he needs Fleeter than storm-swift steeds, For on his heels doth follow,\r\n\r\nArmed with the lightnings of his Sire, Apollo.\r\n\r\nLike sleuth-hounds too The Fates pursue. (Ant. 1)\r\n\r\nYea, but now flashed forth the summons from Parnassus' snowy peak,\r\n\r\n\"Near and far the undiscovered doer of this murder seek!\" Now like a sullen bull he roves Through forest brakes and upland groves, And vainly seeks to fly The doom that ever nigh Flits o'er his head,\r\n\r\nStill by the avenging Phoebus sped,\r\n\r\nThe voice divine, From Earth's mid shrine. (Str. 2)\r\n\r\nSore perplexed am I by the words of the master seer.\r\n\r\nAre they true, are they false? I know not and bridle my tongue for fear,\r\n\r\nFluttered with vague surmise; nor present nor future is clear.\r\n\r\nQuarrel of ancient date or in days still near know I none\r\n\r\nTwixt the Labdacidan house and our ruler, Polybus' son.\r\n\r\nProof is there none: how then can I challenge our King's good name,\r\n\r\nHow in a blood-feud join for an untracked deed of shame?\r\n\r\n(Ant. 2)\r\n\r\nAll wise are Zeus and Apollo, and nothing is hid from their ken;\r\n\r\nThey are gods; and in wits a man may surpass his fellow men;\r\n\r\nBut that a mortal seer knows more than I know\u2014where\r\n\r\nHath this been proven? Or how without sign assured, can I blame\r\n\r\nHim who saved our State when the winged songstress came,\r\n\r\nTested and tried in the light of us all, like gold assayed?\r\n\r\nHow can I now assent when a crime is on Oedipus laid?\r\n

CREON<\/h3>\r\nFriends, countrymen, I learn King Oedipus\r\n\r\nHath laid against me a most grievous charge,\r\n\r\nAnd come to you protesting. If he deems\r\n\r\nThat I have harmed or injured him in aught\r\n\r\nBy word or deed in this our present trouble,\r\n\r\nI care not to prolong the span of life,\r\n\r\nThus ill-reputed; for the calumny\r\n\r\nHits not a single blot, but blasts my name,\r\n\r\nIf by the general voice I am denounced\r\n\r\nFalse to the State and false by you my friends.\r\n

CHORUS<\/h3>\r\nThis taunt, it well may be, was blurted out\r\n\r\nIn petulance, not spoken advisedly.\r\n

CREON<\/h3>\r\nDid any dare pretend that it was I\r\n\r\nPrompted the seer to utter a forged charge?\r\n

CHORUS<\/h3>\r\nSuch things were said; with what intent I know not.\r\n

CREON<\/h3>\r\nWere not his wits and vision all astray\r\n\r\nWhen upon me he fixed this monstrous charge?\r\n

CHORUS<\/h3>\r\nI know not; to my sovereign's acts I am blind.\r\n\r\nBut lo, he comes to answer for himself.\r\n\r\n[Enter OEDIPUS.]\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nSirrah, what mak'st thou here? Dost thou presume\r\n\r\nTo approach my doors, thou brazen-faced rogue,\r\n\r\nMy murderer and the filcher of my crown?\r\n\r\nCome, answer this, didst thou detect in me\r\n\r\nSome touch of cowardice or witlessness,\r\n\r\nThat made thee undertake this enterprise?\r\n\r\nI seemed forsooth too simple to perceive\r\n\r\nThe serpent stealing on me in the dark,\r\n\r\nOr else too weak to scotch it when I saw.\r\n\r\nThis thou<\/i> art witless seeking to possess\r\n\r\nWithout a following or friends the crown,\r\n\r\nA prize that followers and wealth must win.\r\n

CREON<\/h3>\r\nAttend me. Thou hast spoken, 'tis my turn\r\n\r\nTo make reply. Then having heard me, judge.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nThou art glib of tongue, but I am slow to learn\r\n\r\nOf thee; I know too well thy venomous hate.\r\n

CREON<\/h3>\r\nFirst I would argue out this very point.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nO argue not that thou art not a rogue.\r\n

CREON<\/h3>\r\nIf thou dost count a virtue stubbornness,\r\n\r\nUnschooled by reason, thou art much astray.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nIf thou dost hold a kinsman may be wronged,\r\n\r\nAnd no pains follow, thou art much to seek.\r\n

CREON<\/h3>\r\nTherein thou judgest rightly, but this wrong\r\n\r\nThat thou allegest\u2014tell me what it is.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nDidst thou or didst thou not advise that I\r\n\r\nShould call the priest?\r\n

CREON<\/h3>\r\nYes, and I stand to it.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nTell me how long is it since Laius...\r\n

CREON<\/h3>\r\nSince Laius...? I follow not thy drift.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nBy violent hands was spirited away.\r\n

CREON<\/h3>\r\nIn the dim past, a many years agone.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nDid the same prophet then pursue his craft?\r\n

CREON<\/h3>\r\nYes, skilled as now and in no less repute.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nDid he at that time ever glance at me?\r\n

CREON<\/h3>\r\nNot to my knowledge, not when I was by.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nBut was no search and inquisition made?\r\n

CREON<\/h3>\r\nSurely full quest was made, but nothing learnt.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nWhy failed the seer to tell his story then<\/i>?\r\n

CREON<\/h3>\r\nI know not, and not knowing hold my tongue.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nThis much thou knowest and canst surely tell.\r\n

CREON<\/h3>\r\nWhat's mean'st thou? All I know I will declare.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nBut for thy prompting never had the seer\r\n\r\nAscribed to me the death of Laius.\r\n

CREON<\/h3>\r\nIf so he thou knowest best; but I\r\n\r\nWould put thee to the question in my turn.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nQuestion and prove me murderer if thou canst.\r\n

CREON<\/h3>\r\nThen let me ask thee, didst thou wed my sister?\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nA fact so plain I cannot well deny.\r\n

CREON<\/h3>\r\nAnd as thy consort queen she shares the throne?\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nI grant her freely all her heart desires.\r\n

CREON<\/h3>\r\nAnd with you twain I share the triple rule?\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nYea, and it is that proves thee a false friend.\r\n

CREON<\/h3>\r\nNot so, if thou wouldst reason with thyself,\r\n\r\nAs I with myself. First, I bid thee think,\r\n\r\nWould any mortal choose a troubled reign\r\n\r\nOf terrors rather than secure repose,\r\n\r\nIf the same power were given him? As for me,\r\n\r\nI have no natural craving for the name\r\n\r\nOf king, preferring to do kingly deeds,\r\n\r\nAnd so thinks every sober-minded man.\r\n\r\nNow all my needs are satisfied through thee,\r\n\r\nAnd I have naught to fear; but were I king,\r\n\r\nMy acts would oft run counter to my will.\r\n\r\nHow could a title then have charms for me\r\n\r\nAbove the sweets of boundless influence?\r\n\r\nI am not so infatuate as to grasp\r\n\r\nThe shadow when I hold the substance fast.\r\n\r\nNow all men cry me Godspeed! wish me well,\r\n\r\nAnd every suitor seeks to gain my ear,\r\n\r\nIf he would hope to win a grace from thee.\r\n\r\nWhy should I leave the better, choose the worse?\r\n\r\nThat were sheer madness, and I am not mad.\r\n\r\nNo such ambition ever tempted me,\r\n\r\nNor would I have a share in such intrigue.\r\n\r\nAnd if thou doubt me, first to Delphi go,\r\n\r\nThere ascertain if my report was true\r\n\r\nOf the god's answer; next investigate\r\n\r\nIf with the seer I plotted or conspired,\r\n\r\nAnd if it prove so, sentence me to death,\r\n\r\nNot by thy voice alone, but mine and thine.\r\n\r\nBut O condemn me not, without appeal,\r\n\r\nOn bare suspicion. 'Tis not right to adjudge\r\n\r\nBad men at random good, or good men bad.\r\n\r\nI would as lief a man should cast away\r\n\r\nThe thing he counts most precious, his own life,\r\n\r\nAs spurn a true friend. Thou wilt learn in time\r\n\r\nThe truth, for time alone reveals the just;\r\n\r\nA villain is detected in a day.\r\n

CHORUS<\/h3>\r\nTo one who walketh warily his words\r\n\r\nCommend themselves; swift counsels are not sure.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nWhen with swift strides the stealthy plotter stalks\r\n\r\nI must be quick too with my counterplot.\r\n\r\nTo wait his onset passively, for him\r\n\r\nIs sure success, for me assured defeat.\r\n

CREON<\/h3>\r\nWhat then's thy will? To banish me the land?\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nI would not have thee banished, no, but dead,\r\n\r\nThat men may mark the wages envy reaps.\r\n

CREON<\/h3>\r\nI see thou wilt not yield, nor credit me.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\n[None but a fool would credit such as thou.] 3<\/a>\r\n

CREON<\/h3>\r\nThou art not wise.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nWise for myself at least.\r\n

CREON<\/h3>\r\nWhy not for me too?\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nWhy for such a knave?\r\n

CREON<\/h3>\r\nSuppose thou lackest sense.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nYet kings must rule.\r\n

CREON<\/h3>\r\nNot if they rule ill.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nOh my Thebans, hear him!\r\n

CREON<\/h3>\r\nThy Thebans? am not I a Theban too?\r\n

CHORUS<\/h3>\r\nCease, princes; lo there comes, and none too soon,\r\n\r\nJocasta from the palace. Who so fit\r\n\r\nAs peacemaker to reconcile your feud?\r\n\r\n[Enter JOCASTA.]\r\n

JOCASTA<\/h3>\r\nMisguided princes, why have ye upraised\r\n\r\nThis wordy wrangle? Are ye not ashamed,\r\n\r\nWhile the whole land lies striken, thus to voice\r\n\r\nYour private injuries? Go in, my lord;\r\n\r\nGo home, my brother, and forebear to make\r\n\r\nA public scandal of a petty grief.\r\n

CREON<\/h3>\r\nMy royal sister, Oedipus, thy lord,\r\n\r\nHath bid me choose (O dread alternative!)\r\n\r\nAn outlaw's exile or a felon's death.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nYes, lady; I have caught him practicing\r\n\r\nAgainst my royal person his vile arts.\r\n

CREON<\/h3>\r\nMay I ne'er speed but die accursed, if I\r\n\r\nIn any way am guilty of this charge.\r\n

JOCASTA<\/h3>\r\nBelieve him, I adjure thee, Oedipus,\r\n\r\nFirst for his solemn oath's sake, then for mine,\r\n\r\nAnd for thine elders' sake who wait on thee.\r\n

CHORUS<\/h3>\r\n(Str. 1)\r\n\r\nHearken, King, reflect, we pray thee, but not stubborn but relent.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nSay to what should I consent?\r\n

CHORUS<\/h3>\r\nRespect a man whose probity and troth\r\n\r\nAre known to all and now confirmed by oath.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nDost know what grace thou cravest?\r\n

CHORUS<\/h3>\r\nYea, I know.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nDeclare it then and make thy meaning plain.\r\n

CHORUS<\/h3>\r\nBrand not a friend whom babbling tongues assail;\r\n\r\nLet not suspicion 'gainst his oath prevail.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nBethink you that in seeking this ye seek\r\n\r\nIn very sooth my death or banishment?\r\n

CHORUS<\/h3>\r\nNo, by the leader of the host divine!\r\n\r\n(Str. 2)\r\n\r\nWitness, thou Sun, such thought was never mine,\r\n\r\nUnblest, unfriended may I perish,\r\n\r\nIf ever I such wish did cherish!\r\n\r\nBut O my heart is desolate\r\n\r\nMusing on our striken State,\r\n\r\nDoubly fall'n should discord grow\r\n\r\nTwixt you twain, to crown our woe.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nWell, let him go, no matter what it cost me,\r\n\r\nOr certain death or shameful banishment,\r\n\r\nFor your sake I relent, not his; and him,\r\n\r\nWhere'er he be, my heart shall still abhor.\r\n

CREON<\/h3>\r\nThou art as sullen in thy yielding mood\r\n\r\nAs in thine anger thou wast truculent.\r\n\r\nSuch tempers justly plague themselves the most.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nLeave me in peace and get thee gone.\r\n

CREON<\/h3>\r\nI go,\r\n\r\nBy thee misjudged, but justified by these.\r\n\r\n[Exeunt CREON]\r\n

CHORUS<\/h3>\r\n(Ant. 1)\r\n\r\nLady, lead indoors thy consort; wherefore longer here delay?\r\n

JOCASTA<\/h3>\r\nTell me first how rose the fray.\r\n

CHORUS<\/h3>\r\nRumors bred unjust suspicious and injustice rankles sore.\r\n

JOCASTA<\/h3>\r\nWere both at fault?\r\n

CHORUS<\/h3>\r\nBoth.\r\n

JOCASTA<\/h3>\r\nWhat was the tale?\r\n

CHORUS<\/h3>\r\nAsk me no more. The land is sore distressed;\r\n\r\n'Twere better sleeping ills to leave at rest.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nStrange counsel, friend! I know thou mean'st me well,\r\n\r\nAnd yet would'st mitigate and blunt my zeal.\r\n

CHORUS<\/h3>\r\n(Ant. 2)\r\n\r\nKing, I say it once again,\r\n\r\nWitless were I proved, insane,\r\n\r\nIf I lightly put away\r\n\r\nThee my country's prop and stay,\r\n\r\nPilot who, in danger sought,\r\n\r\nTo a quiet haven brought\r\n\r\nOur distracted State; and now\r\n\r\nWho can guide us right but thou?\r\n

JOCASTA<\/h3>\r\nLet me too, I adjure thee, know, O king,\r\n\r\nWhat cause has stirred this unrelenting wrath.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nI will, for thou art more to me than these.\r\n\r\nLady, the cause is Creon and his plots.\r\n

JOCASTA<\/h3>\r\nBut what provoked the quarrel? make this clear.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nHe points me out as Laius' murderer.\r\n

JOCASTA<\/h3>\r\nOf his own knowledge or upon report?\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nHe is too cunning to commit himself,\r\n\r\nAnd makes a mouthpiece of a knavish seer.\r\n

JOCASTA<\/h3>\r\nThen thou mayest ease thy conscience on that score.\r\n\r\nListen and I'll convince thee that no man\r\n\r\nHath scot or lot in the prophetic art.\r\n\r\nHere is the proof in brief. An oracle\r\n\r\nOnce came to Laius (I will not say\r\n\r\n'Twas from the Delphic god himself, but from\r\n\r\nHis ministers) declaring he was doomed\r\n\r\nTo perish by the hand of his own son,\r\n\r\nA child that should be born to him by me.\r\n\r\nNow Laius\u2014so at least report affirmed\u2014\r\n\r\nWas murdered on a day by highwaymen,\r\n\r\nNo natives, at a spot where three roads meet.\r\n\r\nAs for the child, it was but three days old,\r\n\r\nWhen Laius, its ankles pierced and pinned\r\n\r\nTogether, gave it to be cast away\r\n\r\nBy others on the trackless mountain side.\r\n\r\nSo then Apollo brought it not to pass\r\n\r\nThe child should be his father's murderer,\r\n\r\nOr the dread terror find accomplishment,\r\n\r\nAnd Laius be slain by his own son.\r\n\r\nSuch was the prophet's horoscope. O king,\r\n\r\nRegard it not. Whate'er the god deems fit\r\n\r\nTo search, himself unaided will reveal.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nWhat memories, what wild tumult of the soul\r\n\r\nCame o'er me, lady, as I heard thee speak!\r\n

JOCASTA<\/h3>\r\nWhat mean'st thou? What has shocked and startled thee?\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nMethought I heard thee say that Laius\r\n\r\nWas murdered at the meeting of three roads.\r\n

JOCASTA<\/h3>\r\nSo ran the story that is current still.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nWhere did this happen? Dost thou know the place?\r\n

JOCASTA<\/h3>\r\nPhocis the land is called; the spot is where\r\n\r\nBranch roads from Delphi and from Daulis meet.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nAnd how long is it since these things befell?\r\n

JOCASTA<\/h3>\r\n'Twas but a brief while were thou wast proclaimed\r\n\r\nOur country's ruler that the news was brought.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nO Zeus, what hast thou willed to do with me!\r\n

JOCASTA<\/h3>\r\nWhat is it, Oedipus, that moves thee so?\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nAsk me not yet; tell me the build and height\r\n\r\nOf Laius? Was he still in manhood's prime?\r\n

JOCASTA<\/h3>\r\nTall was he, and his hair was lightly strewn\r\n\r\nWith silver; and not unlike thee in form.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nO woe is me! Mehtinks unwittingly\r\n\r\nI laid but now a dread curse on myself.\r\n

JOCASTA<\/h3>\r\nWhat say'st thou? When I look upon thee, my king,\r\n\r\nI tremble.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\n'Tis a dread presentiment\r\n\r\nThat in the end the seer will prove not blind.\r\n\r\nOne further question to resolve my doubt.\r\n

JOCASTA<\/h3>\r\nI quail; but ask, and I will answer all.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nHad he but few attendants or a train\r\n\r\nOf armed retainers with him, like a prince?\r\n

JOCASTA<\/h3>\r\nThey were but five in all, and one of them\r\n\r\nA herald; Laius in a mule-car rode.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nAlas! 'tis clear as noonday now. But say,\r\n\r\nLady, who carried this report to Thebes?\r\n

JOCASTA<\/h3>\r\nA serf, the sole survivor who returned.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nHaply he is at hand or in the house?\r\n

JOCASTA<\/h3>\r\nNo, for as soon as he returned and found\r\n\r\nThee reigning in the stead of Laius slain,\r\n\r\nHe clasped my hand and supplicated me\r\n\r\nTo send him to the alps and pastures, where\r\n\r\nHe might be farthest from the sight of Thebes.\r\n\r\nAnd so I sent him. 'Twas an honest slave\r\n\r\nAnd well deserved some better recompense.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nFetch him at once. I fain would see the man.\r\n

JOCASTA<\/h3>\r\nHe shall be brought; but wherefore summon him?\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nLady, I fear my tongue has overrun\r\n\r\nDiscretion; therefore I would question him.\r\n

JOCASTA<\/h3>\r\nWell, he shall come, but may not I too claim\r\n\r\nTo share the burden of thy heart, my king?\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nAnd thou shalt not be frustrate of thy wish.\r\n\r\nNow my imaginings have gone so far.\r\n\r\nWho has a higher claim that thou to hear\r\n\r\nMy tale of dire adventures? Listen then.\r\n\r\nMy sire was Polybus of Corinth, and\r\n\r\nMy mother Merope, a Dorian;\r\n\r\nAnd I was held the foremost citizen,\r\n\r\nTill a strange thing befell me, strange indeed,\r\n\r\nYet scarce deserving all the heat it stirred.\r\n\r\nA roisterer at some banquet, flown with wine,\r\n\r\nShouted \"Thou art not true son of thy sire.\"\r\n\r\nIt irked me, but I stomached for the nonce\r\n\r\nThe insult; on the morrow I sought out\r\n\r\nMy mother and my sire and questioned them.\r\n\r\nThey were indignant at the random slur\r\n\r\nCast on my parentage and did their best\r\n\r\nTo comfort me, but still the venomed barb\r\n\r\nRankled, for still the scandal spread and grew.\r\n\r\nSo privily without their leave I went\r\n\r\nTo Delphi, and Apollo sent me back\r\n\r\nBaulked of the knowledge that I came to seek.\r\n\r\nBut other grievous things he prophesied,\r\n\r\nWoes, lamentations, mourning, portents dire;\r\n\r\nTo wit I should defile my mother's bed\r\n\r\nAnd raise up seed too loathsome to behold,\r\n\r\nAnd slay the father from whose loins I sprang.\r\n\r\nThen, lady,\u2014thou shalt hear the very truth\u2014\r\n\r\nAs I drew near the triple-branching roads,\r\n\r\nA herald met me and a man who sat\r\n\r\nIn a car drawn by colts\u2014as in thy tale\u2014\r\n\r\nThe man in front and the old man himself\r\n\r\nThreatened to thrust me rudely from the path,\r\n\r\nThen jostled by the charioteer in wrath\r\n\r\nI struck him, and the old man, seeing this,\r\n\r\nWatched till I passed and from his car brought down\r\n\r\nFull on my head the double-pointed goad.\r\n\r\nYet was I quits with him and more; one stroke\r\n\r\nOf my good staff sufficed to fling him clean\r\n\r\nOut of the chariot seat and laid him prone.\r\n\r\nAnd so I slew them every one. But if\r\n\r\nBetwixt this stranger there was aught in common\r\n\r\nWith Laius, who more miserable than I,\r\n\r\nWhat mortal could you find more god-abhorred?\r\n\r\nWretch whom no sojourner, no citizen\r\n\r\nMay harbor or address, whom all are bound\r\n\r\nTo harry from their homes. And this same curse\r\n\r\nWas laid on me, and laid by none but me.\r\n\r\nYea with these hands all gory I pollute\r\n\r\nThe bed of him I slew. Say, am I vile?\r\n\r\nAm I not utterly unclean, a wretch\r\n\r\nDoomed to be banished, and in banishment\r\n\r\nForgo the sight of all my dearest ones,\r\n\r\nAnd never tread again my native earth;\r\n\r\nOr else to wed my mother and slay my sire,\r\n\r\nPolybus, who begat me and upreared?\r\n\r\nIf one should say, this is the handiwork\r\n\r\nOf some inhuman power, who could blame\r\n\r\nHis judgment? But, ye pure and awful gods,\r\n\r\nForbid, forbid that I should see that day!\r\n\r\nMay I be blotted out from living men\r\n\r\nEre such a plague spot set on me its brand!\r\n

CHORUS<\/h3>\r\nWe too, O king, are troubled; but till thou\r\n\r\nHast questioned the survivor, still hope on.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nMy hope is faint, but still enough survives\r\n\r\nTo bid me bide the coming of this herd.\r\n

JOCASTA<\/h3>\r\nSuppose him here, what wouldst thou learn of him?\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nI'll tell thee, lady; if his tale agrees\r\n\r\nWith thine, I shall have 'scaped calamity.\r\n

JOCASTA<\/h3>\r\nAnd what of special import did I say?\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nIn thy report of what the herdsman said\r\n\r\nLaius was slain by robbers; now if he\r\n\r\nStill speaks of robbers, not a robber, I\r\n\r\nSlew him not; \"one\" with \"many\" cannot square.\r\n\r\nBut if he says one lonely wayfarer,\r\n\r\nThe last link wanting to my guilt is forged.\r\n

JOCASTA<\/h3>\r\nWell, rest assured, his tale ran thus at first,\r\n\r\nNor can he now retract what then he said;\r\n\r\nNot I alone but all our townsfolk heard it.\r\n\r\nE'en should he vary somewhat in his story,\r\n\r\nHe cannot make the death of Laius\r\n\r\nIn any wise jump with the oracle.\r\n\r\nFor Loxias said expressly he was doomed\r\n\r\nTo die by my child's hand, but he, poor babe,\r\n\r\nHe shed no blood, but perished first himself.\r\n\r\nSo much for divination. Henceforth I\r\n\r\nWill look for signs neither to right nor left.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nThou reasonest well. Still I would have thee send\r\n\r\nAnd fetch the bondsman hither. See to it.\r\n

JOCASTA<\/h3>\r\nThat will I straightway. Come, let us within.\r\n\r\nI would do nothing that my lord mislikes.\r\n\r\n[Exeunt OEDIPUS and JOCASTA]\r\n

CHORUS<\/h3>\r\n(Str. 1)\r\n\r\nMy lot be still to lead\r\n\r\nThe life of innocence and fly\r\n\r\nIrreverence in word or deed,\r\n\r\nTo follow still those laws ordained on high\r\n\r\nWhose birthplace is the bright ethereal sky\r\n\r\nNo mortal birth they own, Olympus their progenitor alone:\r\n\r\nNe'er shall they slumber in oblivion cold,\r\n\r\nThe god in them is strong and grows not old.\r\n\r\n(Ant. 1) Of insolence is bred\r\n\r\nThe tyrant; insolence full blown,\r\n\r\nWith empty riches surfeited,\r\n\r\nScales the precipitous height and grasps the throne.\r\n\r\nThen topples o'er and lies in ruin prone; No foothold on that dizzy steep.\r\n\r\nBut O may Heaven the true patriot keep\r\n\r\nWho burns with emulous zeal to serve the State.\r\n\r\nGod is my help and hope, on him I wait.\r\n\r\n(Str. 2)\r\n\r\nBut the proud sinner, or in word or deed,\r\n\r\nThat will not Justice heed, Nor reverence the shrine Of images divine,\r\n\r\nPerdition seize his vain imaginings,\r\n\r\nIf, urged by greed profane, He grasps at ill-got gain,\r\n\r\nAnd lays an impious hand on holiest things.\r\n\r\nWho when such deeds are done Can hope heaven's bolts to shun?\r\n\r\nIf sin like this to honor can aspire,\r\n\r\nWhy dance I still and lead the sacred choir?\r\n\r\n(Ant. 2)\r\n\r\nNo more I'll seek earth's central oracle,\r\n\r\nOr Abae's hallowed cell, Nor to Olympia bring My votive offering.\r\n\r\nIf before all God's truth be not bade plain.\r\n\r\nO Zeus, reveal thy might, King, if thou'rt named aright\r\n\r\nOmnipotent, all-seeing, as of old;\r\n\r\nFor Laius is forgot; His weird, men heed it not;\r\n\r\nApollo is forsook and faith grows cold.\r\n\r\n[Enter JOCASTA.]\r\n

JOCASTA<\/h3>\r\nMy lords, ye look amazed to see your queen\r\n\r\nWith wreaths and gifts of incense in her hands.\r\n\r\nI had a mind to visit the high shrines,\r\n\r\nFor Oedipus is overwrought, alarmed\r\n\r\nWith terrors manifold. He will not use\r\n\r\nHis past experience, like a man of sense,\r\n\r\nTo judge the present need, but lends an ear\r\n\r\nTo any croaker if he augurs ill.\r\n\r\nSince then my counsels naught avail, I turn\r\n\r\nTo thee, our present help in time of trouble,\r\n\r\nApollo, Lord Lycean, and to thee\r\n\r\nMy prayers and supplications here I bring.\r\n\r\nLighten us, lord, and cleanse us from this curse!\r\n\r\nFor now we all are cowed like mariners\r\n\r\nWho see their helmsman dumbstruck in the storm.\r\n\r\n[Enter Corinthian MESSENGER.]\r\n

MESSENGER<\/h3>\r\nMy masters, tell me where the palace is\r\n\r\nOf Oedipus; or better, where's the king.\r\n

CHORUS<\/h3>\r\nHere is the palace and he bides within;\r\n\r\nThis is his queen the mother of his children.\r\n

MESSENGER<\/h3>\r\nAll happiness attend her and the house,\r\n\r\nBlessed is her husband and her marriage-bed.\r\n

JOCASTA<\/h3>\r\nMy greetings to thee, stranger; thy fair words\r\n\r\nDeserve a like response. But tell me why\r\n\r\nThou comest\u2014what thy need or what thy news.\r\n

MESSENGER<\/h3>\r\nGood for thy consort and the royal house.\r\n

JOCASTA<\/h3>\r\nWhat may it be? Whose messenger art thou?\r\n

MESSENGER<\/h3>\r\nThe Isthmian commons have resolved to make\r\n\r\nThy husband king\u2014so 'twas reported there.\r\n

JOCASTA<\/h3>\r\nWhat! is not aged Polybus still king?\r\n

MESSENGER<\/h3>\r\nNo, verily; he's dead and in his grave.\r\n

JOCASTA<\/h3>\r\nWhat! is he dead, the sire of Oedipus?\r\n

MESSENGER<\/h3>\r\nIf I speak falsely, may I die myself.\r\n

JOCASTA<\/h3>\r\nQuick, maiden, bear these tidings to my lord.\r\n\r\nYe god-sent oracles, where stand ye now!\r\n\r\nThis is the man whom Oedipus long shunned,\r\n\r\nIn dread to prove his murderer; and now\r\n\r\nHe dies in nature's course, not by his hand.\r\n\r\n[Enter OEDIPUS.]\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nMy wife, my queen, Jocasta, why hast thou\r\n\r\nSummoned me from my palace?\r\n

JOCASTA<\/h3>\r\nHear this man,\r\n\r\nAnd as thou hearest judge what has become\r\n\r\nOf all those awe-inspiring oracles.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nWho is this man, and what his news for me?\r\n

JOCASTA<\/h3>\r\nHe comes from Corinth and his message this:\r\n\r\nThy father Polybus hath passed away.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nWhat? let me have it, stranger, from thy mouth.\r\n

MESSENGER<\/h3>\r\nIf I must first make plain beyond a doubt\r\n\r\nMy message, know that Polybus is dead.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nBy treachery, or by sickness visited?\r\n

MESSENGER<\/h3>\r\nOne touch will send an old man to his rest.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nSo of some malady he died, poor man.\r\n

MESSENGER<\/h3>\r\nYes, having measured the full span of years.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nOut on it, lady! why should one regard\r\n\r\nThe Pythian hearth or birds that scream i' the air?\r\n\r\nDid they not point at me as doomed to slay\r\n\r\nMy father? but he's dead and in his grave\r\n\r\nAnd here am I who ne'er unsheathed a sword;\r\n\r\nUnless the longing for his absent son\r\n\r\nKilled him and so I<\/i> slew him in a sense.\r\n\r\nBut, as they stand, the oracles are dead\u2014\r\n\r\nDust, ashes, nothing, dead as Polybus.\r\n

JOCASTA<\/h3>\r\nSay, did not I foretell this long ago?\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nThou didst: but I was misled by my fear.\r\n

JOCASTA<\/h3>\r\nThen let I no more weigh upon thy soul.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nMust I not fear my mother's marriage bed.\r\n

JOCASTA<\/h3>\r\nWhy should a mortal man, the sport of chance,\r\n\r\nWith no assured foreknowledge, be afraid?\r\n\r\nBest live a careless life from hand to mouth.\r\n\r\nThis wedlock with thy mother fear not thou.\r\n\r\nHow oft it chances that in dreams a man\r\n\r\nHas wed his mother! He who least regards\r\n\r\nSuch brainsick phantasies lives most at ease.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nI should have shared in full thy confidence,\r\n\r\nWere not my mother living; since she lives\r\n\r\nThough half convinced I still must live in dread.\r\n

JOCASTA<\/h3>\r\nAnd yet thy sire's death lights out darkness much.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nMuch, but my fear is touching her who lives.\r\n

MESSENGER<\/h3>\r\nWho may this woman be whom thus you fear?\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nMerope, stranger, wife of Polybus.\r\n

MESSENGER<\/h3>\r\nAnd what of her can cause you any fear?\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nA heaven-sent oracle of dread import.\r\n

MESSENGER<\/h3>\r\nA mystery, or may a stranger hear it?\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nAye, 'tis no secret. Loxias once foretold\r\n\r\nThat I should mate with mine own mother, and shed\r\n\r\nWith my own hands the blood of my own sire.\r\n\r\nHence Corinth was for many a year to me\r\n\r\nA home distant; and I trove abroad,\r\n\r\nBut missed the sweetest sight, my parents' face.\r\n

MESSENGER<\/h3>\r\nWas this the fear that exiled thee from home?\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nYea, and the dread of slaying my own sire.\r\n

MESSENGER<\/h3>\r\nWhy, since I came to give thee pleasure, King,\r\n\r\nHave I not rid thee of this second fear?\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nWell, thou shalt have due guerdon for thy pains.\r\n

MESSENGER<\/h3>\r\nWell, I confess what chiefly made me come\r\n\r\nWas hope to profit by thy coming home.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nNay, I will ne'er go near my parents more.\r\n

MESSENGER<\/h3>\r\nMy son, 'tis plain, thou know'st not what thou doest.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nHow so, old man? For heaven's sake tell me all.\r\n

MESSENGER<\/h3>\r\nIf this is why thou dreadest to return.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nYea, lest the god's word be fulfilled in me.\r\n

MESSENGER<\/h3>\r\nLest through thy parents thou shouldst be accursed?\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nThis and none other is my constant dread.\r\n

MESSENGER<\/h3>\r\nDost thou not know thy fears are baseless all?\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nHow baseless, if I am their very son?\r\n

MESSENGER<\/h3>\r\nSince Polybus was naught to thee in blood.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nWhat say'st thou? was not Polybus my sire?\r\n

MESSENGER<\/h3>\r\nAs much thy sire as I am, and no more.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nMy sire no more to me than one who is naught?\r\n

MESSENGER<\/h3>\r\nSince I begat thee not, no more did he.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nWhat reason had he then to call me son?\r\n

MESSENGER<\/h3>\r\nKnow that he took thee from my hands, a gift.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nYet, if no child of his, he loved me well.\r\n

MESSENGER<\/h3>\r\nA childless man till then, he warmed to thee.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nA foundling or a purchased slave, this child?\r\n

MESSENGER<\/h3>\r\nI found thee in Cithaeron's wooded glens.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nWhat led thee to explore those upland glades?\r\n

MESSENGER<\/h3>\r\nMy business was to tend the mountain flocks.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nA vagrant shepherd journeying for hire?\r\n

MESSENGER<\/h3>\r\nTrue, but thy savior in that hour, my son.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nMy savior? from what harm? what ailed me then?\r\n

MESSENGER<\/h3>\r\nThose ankle joints are evidence enow.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nAh, why remind me of that ancient sore?\r\n

MESSENGER<\/h3>\r\nI loosed the pin that riveted thy feet.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nYes, from my cradle that dread brand I bore.\r\n

MESSENGER<\/h3>\r\nWhence thou deriv'st the name that still is thine.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nWho did it? I adjure thee, tell me who\r\n\r\nSay, was it father, mother?\r\n

MESSENGER<\/h3>\r\nI know not.\r\n\r\nThe man from whom I had thee may know more.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nWhat, did another find me, not thyself?\r\n

MESSENGER<\/h3>\r\nNot I; another shepherd gave thee me.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nWho was he? Would'st thou know again the man?\r\n

MESSENGER<\/h3>\r\nHe passed indeed for one of Laius' house.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nThe king who ruled the country long ago?\r\n

MESSENGER<\/h3>\r\nThe same: he was a herdsman of the king.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nAnd is he living still for me to see him?\r\n

MESSENGER<\/h3>\r\nHis fellow-countrymen should best know that.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nDoth any bystander among you know\r\n\r\nThe herd he speaks of, or by seeing him\r\n\r\nAfield or in the city? answer straight!\r\n\r\nThe hour hath come to clear this business up.\r\n

CHORUS<\/h3>\r\nMethinks he means none other than the hind\r\n\r\nWhom thou anon wert fain to see; but that\r\n\r\nOur queen Jocasta best of all could tell.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nMadam, dost know the man we sent to fetch?\r\n\r\nIs the same of whom the stranger speaks?\r\n

JOCASTA<\/h3>\r\nWho is the man? What matter? Let it be.\r\n\r\n'Twere waste of thought to weigh such idle words.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nNo, with such guiding clues I cannot fail\r\n\r\nTo bring to light the secret of my birth.\r\n

JOCASTA<\/h3>\r\nOh, as thou carest for thy life, give o'er\r\n\r\nThis quest. Enough the anguish I<\/i> endure.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nBe of good cheer; though I be proved the son\r\n\r\nOf a bondwoman, aye, through three descents\r\n\r\nTriply a slave, thy honor is unsmirched.\r\n

JOCASTA<\/h3>\r\nYet humor me, I pray thee; do not this.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nI cannot; I must probe this matter home.\r\n

JOCASTA<\/h3>\r\n'Tis for thy sake I advise thee for the best.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nI grow impatient of this best advice.\r\n

JOCASTA<\/h3>\r\nAh mayst thou ne'er discover who thou art!\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nGo, fetch me here the herd, and leave yon woman\r\n\r\nTo glory in her pride of ancestry.\r\n

JOCASTA<\/h3>\r\nO woe is thee, poor wretch! With that last word\r\n\r\nI leave thee, henceforth silent evermore.\r\n\r\n[Exit JOCASTA]\r\n

CHORUS<\/h3>\r\nWhy, Oedipus, why stung with passionate grief\r\n\r\nHath the queen thus departed? Much I fear\r\n\r\nFrom this dead calm will burst a storm of woes.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nLet the storm burst, my fixed resolve still holds,\r\n\r\nTo learn my lineage, be it ne'er so low.\r\n\r\nIt may be she with all a woman's pride\r\n\r\nThinks scorn of my base parentage. But I\r\n\r\nWho rank myself as Fortune's favorite child,\r\n\r\nThe giver of good gifts, shall not be shamed.\r\n\r\nShe is my mother and the changing moons\r\n\r\nMy brethren, and with them I wax and wane.\r\n\r\nThus sprung why should I fear to trace my birth?\r\n\r\nNothing can make me other than I am.\r\n

CHORUS<\/h3>\r\n(Str.)\r\n\r\nIf my soul prophetic err not, if my wisdom aught avail,\r\n\r\nThee, Cithaeron, I shall hail,\r\n\r\nAs the nurse and foster-mother of our Oedipus shall greet\r\n\r\nEre tomorrow's full moon rises, and exalt thee as is meet.\r\n\r\nDance and song shall hymn thy praises, lover of our royal race.\r\n\r\nPhoebus, may my words find grace! (Ant.)\r\n\r\nChild, who bare thee, nymph or goddess? sure thy sure was more than\r\n\r\nman,\r\n\r\nHaply the hill-roamer Pan.\r\n\r\nOf did Loxias beget thee, for he haunts the upland wold;\r\n\r\nOr Cyllene's lord, or Bacchus, dweller on the hilltops cold?\r\n\r\nDid some Heliconian Oread give him thee, a new-born joy?\r\n\r\nNymphs with whom he love to toy?\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nElders, if I, who never yet before\r\n\r\nHave met the man, may make a guess, methinks\r\n\r\nI see the herdsman who we long have sought;\r\n\r\nHis time-worn aspect matches with the years\r\n\r\nOf yonder aged messenger; besides\r\n\r\nI seem to recognize the men who bring him\r\n\r\nAs servants of my own. But you, perchance,\r\n\r\nHaving in past days known or seen the herd,\r\n\r\nMay better by sure knowledge my surmise.\r\n

CHORUS<\/h3>\r\nI recognize him; one of Laius' house;\r\n\r\nA simple hind, but true as any man.\r\n\r\n[Enter HERDSMAN.]\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nCorinthian, stranger, I address thee first,\r\n\r\nIs this the man thou meanest!\r\n

MESSENGER<\/h3>\r\nThis is he.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nAnd now old man, look up and answer all\r\n\r\nI ask thee. Wast thou once of Laius' house?\r\n

HERDSMAN<\/h3>\r\nI was, a thrall, not purchased but home-bred.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nWhat was thy business? how wast thou employed?\r\n

HERDSMAN<\/h3>\r\nThe best part of my life I tended sheep.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nWhat were the pastures thou didst most frequent?\r\n

HERDSMAN<\/h3>\r\nCithaeron and the neighboring alps.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nThen there\r\n\r\nThou must have known yon man, at least by fame?\r\n

HERDSMAN<\/h3>\r\nYon man? in what way? what man dost thou mean?\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nThe man here, having met him in past times...\r\n

HERDSMAN<\/h3>\r\nOff-hand I cannot call him well to mind.\r\n

MESSENGER<\/h3>\r\nNo wonder, master. But I will revive\r\n\r\nHis blunted memories. Sure he can recall\r\n\r\nWhat time together both we drove our flocks,\r\n\r\nHe two, I one, on the Cithaeron range,\r\n\r\nFor three long summers; I his mate from spring\r\n\r\nTill rose Arcturus; then in winter time\r\n\r\nI led mine home, he his to Laius' folds.\r\n\r\nDid these things happen as I say, or no?\r\n

HERDSMAN<\/h3>\r\n'Tis long ago, but all thou say'st is true.\r\n

MESSENGER<\/h3>\r\nWell, thou mast then remember giving me\r\n\r\nA child to rear as my own foster-son?\r\n

HERDSMAN<\/h3>\r\nWhy dost thou ask this question? What of that?\r\n

MESSENGER<\/h3>\r\nFriend, he that stands before thee was that child.\r\n

HERDSMAN<\/h3>\r\nA plague upon thee! Hold thy wanton tongue!\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nSoftly, old man, rebuke him not; thy words\r\n\r\nAre more deserving chastisement than his.\r\n

HERDSMAN<\/h3>\r\nO best of masters, what is my offense?\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nNot answering what he asks about the child.\r\n

HERDSMAN<\/h3>\r\nHe speaks at random, babbles like a fool.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nIf thou lack'st grace to speak, I'll loose thy tongue.\r\n

HERDSMAN<\/h3>\r\nFor mercy's sake abuse not an old man.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nArrest the villain, seize and pinion him!\r\n

HERDSMAN<\/h3>\r\nAlack, alack!\r\n\r\nWhat have I done? what wouldst thou further learn?\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nDidst give this man the child of whom he asks?\r\n

HERDSMAN<\/h3>\r\nI did; and would that I had died that day!\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nAnd die thou shalt unless thou tell the truth.\r\n

HERDSMAN<\/h3>\r\nBut, if I tell it, I am doubly lost.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nThe knave methinks will still prevaricate.\r\n

HERDSMAN<\/h3>\r\nNay, I confessed I gave it long ago.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nWhence came it? was it thine, or given to thee?\r\n

HERDSMAN<\/h3>\r\nI had it from another, 'twas not mine.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nFrom whom of these our townsmen, and what house?\r\n

HERDSMAN<\/h3>\r\nForbear for God's sake, master, ask no more.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nIf I must question thee again, thou'rt lost.\r\n

HERDSMAN<\/h3>\r\nWell then\u2014it was a child of Laius' house.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nSlave-born or one of Laius' own race?\r\n

HERDSMAN<\/h3>\r\nAh me!\r\n\r\nI stand upon the perilous edge of speech.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nAnd I of hearing, but I still must hear.\r\n

HERDSMAN<\/h3>\r\nKnow then the child was by repute his own,\r\n\r\nBut she within, thy consort best could tell.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nWhat! she, she gave it thee?\r\n

HERDSMAN<\/h3>\r\n'Tis so, my king.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nWith what intent?\r\n

HERDSMAN<\/h3>\r\nTo make away with it.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nWhat, she its mother.\r\n

HERDSMAN<\/h3>\r\nFearing a dread weird.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nWhat weird?\r\n

HERDSMAN<\/h3>\r\n'Twas told that he should slay his sire.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nWhat didst thou give it then to this old man?\r\n

HERDSMAN<\/h3>\r\nThrough pity, master, for the babe. I thought\r\n\r\nHe'd take it to the country whence he came;\r\n\r\nBut he preserved it for the worst of woes.\r\n\r\nFor if thou art in sooth what this man saith,\r\n\r\nGod pity thee! thou wast to misery born.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nAh me! ah me! all brought to pass, all true!\r\n\r\nO light, may I behold thee nevermore!\r\n\r\nI stand a wretch, in birth, in wedlock cursed,\r\n\r\nA parricide, incestuously, triply cursed!\r\n\r\n[Exit OEDIPUS]\r\n

CHORUS<\/h3>\r\n(Str. 1) Races of mortal man Whose life is but a span,\r\n\r\nI count ye but the shadow of a shade!\r\n\r\nFor he who most doth know Of bliss, hath but the show;\r\n\r\nA moment, and the visions pale and fade.\r\n\r\nThy fall, O Oedipus, thy piteous fall\r\n\r\nWarns me none born of women blest to call.\r\n\r\n(Ant. 1) For he of marksmen best, O Zeus, outshot the rest,\r\n\r\nAnd won the prize supreme of wealth and power.\r\n\r\nBy him the vulture maid Was quelled, her witchery laid;\r\n\r\nHe rose our savior and the land's strong tower.\r\n\r\nWe hailed thee king and from that day adored\r\n\r\nOf mighty Thebes the universal lord.\r\n\r\n(Str. 2) O heavy hand of fate! Who now more desolate,\r\n\r\nWhose tale more sad than thine, whose lot more dire?\r\n\r\nO Oedipus, discrowned head, Thy cradle was thy marriage bed;\r\n\r\nOne harborage sufficed for son and sire.\r\n\r\nHow could the soil thy father eared so long\r\n\r\nEndure to bear in silence such a wrong?\r\n\r\n(Ant. 2) All-seeing Time hath caught Guilt, and to justice brought\r\n\r\nThe son and sire commingled in one bed.\r\n\r\nO child of Laius' ill-starred race Would I had ne'er beheld thy face;\r\n\r\nI raise for thee a dirge as o'er the dead.\r\n\r\nYet, sooth to say, through thee I drew new breath,\r\n\r\nAnd now through thee I feel a second death.\r\n\r\n[Enter SECOND MESSENGER.]\r\n

SECOND MESSENGER<\/h3>\r\nMost grave and reverend senators of Thebes,\r\n\r\nWhat Deeds ye soon must hear, what sights behold\r\n\r\nHow will ye mourn, if, true-born patriots,\r\n\r\nYe reverence still the race of Labdacus!\r\n\r\nNot Ister nor all Phasis' flood, I ween,\r\n\r\nCould wash away the blood-stains from this house,\r\n\r\nThe ills it shrouds or soon will bring to light,\r\n\r\nIlls wrought of malice, not unwittingly.\r\n\r\nThe worst to bear are self-inflicted wounds.\r\n

CHORUS<\/h3>\r\nGrievous enough for all our tears and groans\r\n\r\nOur past calamities; what canst thou add?\r\n

SECOND MESSENGER<\/h3>\r\nMy tale is quickly told and quickly heard.\r\n\r\nOur sovereign lady queen Jocasta's dead.\r\n

CHORUS<\/h3>\r\nAlas, poor queen! how came she by her death?\r\n

SECOND MESSENGER<\/h3>\r\nBy her own hand. And all the horror of it,\r\n\r\nNot having seen, yet cannot comprehend.\r\n\r\nNathless, as far as my poor memory serves,\r\n\r\nI will relate the unhappy lady's woe.\r\n\r\nWhen in her frenzy she had passed inside\r\n\r\nThe vestibule, she hurried straight to win\r\n\r\nThe bridal-chamber, clutching at her hair\r\n\r\nWith both her hands, and, once within the room,\r\n\r\nShe shut the doors behind her with a crash.\r\n\r\n\"Laius,\" she cried, and called her husband dead\r\n\r\nLong, long ago; her thought was of that child\r\n\r\nBy him begot, the son by whom the sire\r\n\r\nWas murdered and the mother left to breed\r\n\r\nWith her own seed, a monstrous progeny.\r\n\r\nThen she bewailed the marriage bed whereon\r\n\r\nPoor wretch, she had conceived a double brood,\r\n\r\nHusband by husband, children by her child.\r\n\r\nWhat happened after that I cannot tell,\r\n\r\nNor how the end befell, for with a shriek\r\n\r\nBurst on us Oedipus; all eyes were fixed\r\n\r\nOn Oedipus, as up and down he strode,\r\n\r\nNor could we mark her agony to the end.\r\n\r\nFor stalking to and fro \"A sword!\" he cried,\r\n\r\n\"Where is the wife, no wife, the teeming womb\r\n\r\nThat bore a double harvest, me and mine?\"\r\n\r\nAnd in his frenzy some supernal power\r\n\r\n(No mortal, surely, none of us who watched him)\r\n\r\nGuided his footsteps; with a terrible shriek,\r\n\r\nAs though one beckoned him, he crashed against\r\n\r\nThe folding doors, and from their staples forced\r\n\r\nThe wrenched bolts and hurled himself within.\r\n\r\nThen we beheld the woman hanging there,\r\n\r\nA running noose entwined about her neck.\r\n\r\nBut when he saw her, with a maddened roar\r\n\r\nHe loosed the cord; and when her wretched corpse\r\n\r\nLay stretched on earth, what followed\u2014O 'twas dread!\r\n\r\nHe tore the golden brooches that upheld\r\n\r\nHer queenly robes, upraised them high and smote\r\n\r\nFull on his eye-balls, uttering words like these:\r\n\r\n\"No more shall ye behold such sights of woe,\r\n\r\nDeeds I have suffered and myself have wrought;\r\n\r\nHenceforward quenched in darkness shall ye see\r\n\r\nThose ye should ne'er have seen; now blind to those\r\n\r\nWhom, when I saw, I vainly yearned to know.\"\r\n\r\nSuch was the burden of his moan, whereto,\r\n\r\nNot once but oft, he struck with his hand uplift\r\n\r\nHis eyes, and at each stroke the ensanguined orbs\r\n\r\nBedewed his beard, not oozing drop by drop,\r\n\r\nBut one black gory downpour, thick as hail.\r\n\r\nSuch evils, issuing from the double source,\r\n\r\nHave whelmed them both, confounding man and wife.\r\n\r\nTill now the storied fortune of this house\r\n\r\nWas fortunate indeed; but from this day\r\n\r\nWoe, lamentation, ruin, death, disgrace,\r\n\r\nAll ills that can be named, all, all are theirs.\r\n

CHORUS<\/h3>\r\nBut hath he still no respite from his pain?\r\n

SECOND MESSENGER<\/h3>\r\nHe cries, \"Unbar the doors and let all Thebes\r\n\r\nBehold the slayer of his sire, his mother's\u2014\"\r\n\r\nThat shameful word my lips may not repeat.\r\n\r\nHe vows to fly self-banished from the land,\r\n\r\nNor stay to bring upon his house the curse\r\n\r\nHimself had uttered; but he has no strength\r\n\r\nNor one to guide him, and his torture's more\r\n\r\nThan man can suffer, as yourselves will see.\r\n\r\nFor lo, the palace portals are unbarred,\r\n\r\nAnd soon ye shall behold a sight so sad\r\n\r\nThat he who must abhorred would pity it.\r\n\r\n[Enter OEDIPUS blinded.]\r\n

CHORUS<\/h3>\r\nWoeful sight! more woeful none These sad eyes have looked upon. Whence this madness? None can tell Who did cast on thee his spell, prowling all thy life around, Leaping with a demon bound. Hapless wretch! how can I brook On thy misery to look? Though to gaze on thee I yearn, Much to question, much to learn, Horror-struck away I turn.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nAh me! ah woe is me!\r\n\r\nAh whither am I borne!\r\n\r\nHow like a ghost forlorn\r\n\r\nMy voice flits from me on the air!\r\n\r\nOn, on the demon goads. The end, ah where?\r\n

CHORUS<\/h3>\r\nAn end too dread to tell, too dark to see.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\n(Str. 1)\r\n\r\nDark, dark! The horror of darkness, like a shroud,\r\n\r\nWraps me and bears me on through mist and cloud.\r\n\r\nAh me, ah me! What spasms athwart me shoot,\r\n\r\nWhat pangs of agonizing memory?\r\n

CHORUS<\/h3>\r\nNo marvel if in such a plight thou feel'st\r\n\r\nThe double weight of past and present woes.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\n(Ant. 1)\r\n\r\nAh friend, still loyal, constant still and kind,\r\n\r\nThou carest for the blind.\r\n\r\nI know thee near, and though bereft of eyes,\r\n\r\nThy voice I recognize.\r\n

CHORUS<\/h3>\r\nO doer of dread deeds, how couldst thou mar\r\n\r\nThy vision thus? What demon goaded thee?\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\n(Str. 2)\r\n\r\nApollo, friend, Apollo, he it was\r\n\r\nThat brought these ills to pass;\r\n\r\nBut the right hand that dealt the blow\r\n\r\nWas mine, none other. How,\r\n\r\nHow, could I longer see when sight\r\n\r\nBrought no delight?\r\n

CHORUS<\/h3>\r\nAlas! 'tis as thou sayest.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nSay, friends, can any look or voice\r\n\r\nOr touch of love henceforth my heart rejoice?\r\n\r\nHaste, friends, no fond delay, Take the twice cursed away Far from all ken,\r\n\r\nThe man abhorred of gods, accursed of men.\r\n

CHORUS<\/h3>\r\nO thy despair well suits thy desperate case.\r\n\r\nWould I had never looked upon thy face!\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\n(Ant. 2)\r\n\r\nMy curse on him whoe'er unrived\r\n\r\nThe waif's fell fetters and my life revived!\r\n\r\nHe meant me well, yet had he left me there,\r\n\r\nHe had saved my friends and me a world of care.\r\n

CHORUS<\/h3>\r\nI too had wished it so.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nThen had I never come to shed\r\n\r\nMy father's blood nor climbed my mother's bed;\r\n\r\nThe monstrous offspring of a womb defiled,\r\n\r\nCo-mate of him who gendered me, and child.\r\n\r\nWas ever man before afflicted thus,\r\n\r\nLike Oedipus.\r\n

CHORUS<\/h3>\r\nI cannot say that thou hast counseled well,\r\n\r\nFor thou wert better dead than living blind.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nWhat's done was well done. Thou canst never shake\r\n\r\nMy firm belief. A truce to argument.\r\n\r\nFor, had I sight, I know not with what eyes\r\n\r\nI could have met my father in the shades,\r\n\r\nOr my poor mother, since against the twain\r\n\r\nI sinned, a sin no gallows could atone.\r\n\r\nAye, but, ye say, the sight of children joys\r\n\r\nA parent's eyes. What, born as mine were born?\r\n\r\nNo, such a sight could never bring me joy;\r\n\r\nNor this fair city with its battlements,\r\n\r\nIts temples and the statues of its gods,\r\n\r\nSights from which I, now wretchedst of all,\r\n\r\nOnce ranked the foremost Theban in all Thebes,\r\n\r\nBy my own sentence am cut off, condemned\r\n\r\nBy my own proclamation 'gainst the wretch,\r\n\r\nThe miscreant by heaven itself declared\r\n\r\nUnclean\u2014and of the race of Laius.\r\n\r\nThus branded as a felon by myself,\r\n\r\nHow had I dared to look you in the face?\r\n\r\nNay, had I known a way to choke the springs\r\n\r\nOf hearing, I had never shrunk to make\r\n\r\nA dungeon of this miserable frame,\r\n\r\nCut off from sight and hearing; for 'tis bliss\r\n\r\nto bide in regions sorrow cannot reach.\r\n\r\nWhy didst thou harbor me, Cithaeron, why\r\n\r\nDidst thou not take and slay me? Then I never\r\n\r\nHad shown to men the secret of my birth.\r\n\r\nO Polybus, O Corinth, O my home,\r\n\r\nHome of my ancestors (so wast thou called)\r\n\r\nHow fair a nursling then I seemed, how foul\r\n\r\nThe canker that lay festering in the bud!\r\n\r\nNow is the blight revealed of root and fruit.\r\n\r\nYe triple high-roads, and thou hidden glen,\r\n\r\nCoppice, and pass where meet the three-branched ways,\r\n\r\nYe drank my blood, the life-blood these hands spilt,\r\n\r\nMy father's; do ye call to mind perchance\r\n\r\nThose deeds of mine ye witnessed and the work\r\n\r\nI wrought thereafter when I came to Thebes?\r\n\r\nO fatal wedlock, thou didst give me birth,\r\n\r\nAnd, having borne me, sowed again my seed,\r\n\r\nMingling the blood of fathers, brothers, children,\r\n\r\nBrides, wives and mothers, an incestuous brood,\r\n\r\nAll horrors that are wrought beneath the sun,\r\n\r\nHorrors so foul to name them were unmeet.\r\n\r\nO, I adjure you, hide me anywhere\r\n\r\nFar from this land, or slay me straight, or cast me\r\n\r\nDown to the depths of ocean out of sight.\r\n\r\nCome hither, deign to touch an abject wretch;\r\n\r\nDraw near and fear not; I myself must bear\r\n\r\nThe load of guilt that none but I can share.\r\n\r\n[Enter CREON.]\r\n

CREON<\/h3>\r\nLo, here is Creon, the one man to grant\r\n\r\nThy prayer by action or advice, for he\r\n\r\nIs left the State's sole guardian in thy stead.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nAh me! what words to accost him can I find?\r\n\r\nWhat cause has he to trust me? In the past\r\n\r\nI have bee proved his rancorous enemy.\r\n

CREON<\/h3>\r\nNot in derision, Oedipus, I come\r\n\r\nNor to upbraid thee with thy past misdeeds.\r\n\r\n(To BYSTANDERS)\r\n\r\nBut shame upon you! if ye feel no sense\r\n\r\nOf human decencies, at least revere\r\n\r\nThe Sun whose light beholds and nurtures all.\r\n\r\nLeave not thus nakedly for all to gaze at\r\n\r\nA horror neither earth nor rain from heaven\r\n\r\nNor light will suffer. Lead him straight within,\r\n\r\nFor it is seemly that a kinsman's woes\r\n\r\nBe heard by kin and seen by kin alone.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nO listen, since thy presence comes to me\r\n\r\nA shock of glad surprise\u2014so noble thou,\r\n\r\nAnd I so vile\u2014O grant me one small boon.\r\n\r\nI ask it not on my behalf, but thine.\r\n

CREON<\/h3>\r\nAnd what the favor thou wouldst crave of me?\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nForth from thy borders thrust me with all speed;\r\n\r\nSet me within some vasty desert where\r\n\r\nNo mortal voice shall greet me any more.\r\n

CREON<\/h3>\r\nThis had I done already, but I deemed\r\n\r\nIt first behooved me to consult the god.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nHis will was set forth fully\u2014to destroy\r\n\r\nThe parricide, the scoundrel; and I am he.\r\n

CREON<\/h3>\r\nYea, so he spake, but in our present plight\r\n\r\n'Twere better to consult the god anew.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nDare ye inquire concerning such a wretch?\r\n

CREON<\/h3>\r\nYea, for thyself wouldst credit now his word.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nAye, and on thee in all humility\r\n\r\nI lay this charge: let her who lies within\r\n\r\nReceive such burial as thou shalt ordain;\r\n\r\nSuch rites 'tis thine, as brother, to perform.\r\n\r\nBut for myself, O never let my Thebes,\r\n\r\nThe city of my sires, be doomed to bear\r\n\r\nThe burden of my presence while I live.\r\n\r\nNo, let me be a dweller on the hills,\r\n\r\nOn yonder mount Cithaeron, famed as mine,\r\n\r\nMy tomb predestined for me by my sire\r\n\r\nAnd mother, while they lived, that I may die\r\n\r\nSlain as they sought to slay me, when alive.\r\n\r\nThis much I know full surely, nor disease\r\n\r\nShall end my days, nor any common chance;\r\n\r\nFor I had ne'er been snatched from death, unless\r\n\r\nI was predestined to some awful doom.\r\n\r\nSo be it. I reck not how Fate deals with me\r\n\r\nBut my unhappy children\u2014for my sons\r\n\r\nBe not concerned, O Creon, they are men,\r\n\r\nAnd for themselves, where'er they be, can fend.\r\n\r\nBut for my daughters twain, poor innocent maids,\r\n\r\nWho ever sat beside me at the board\r\n\r\nSharing my viands, drinking of my cup,\r\n\r\nFor them, I pray thee, care, and, if thou willst,\r\n\r\nO might I feel their touch and make my moan.\r\n\r\nHear me, O prince, my noble-hearted prince!\r\n\r\nCould I but blindly touch them with my hands\r\n\r\nI'd think they still were mine, as when I saw.\r\n\r\n[ANTIGONE and ISMENE are led in.]\r\n\r\nWhat say I? can it be my pretty ones\r\n\r\nWhose sobs I hear? Has Creon pitied me\r\n\r\nAnd sent me my two darlings? Can this be?\r\n

CREON<\/h3>\r\n'Tis true; 'twas I procured thee this delight,\r\n\r\nKnowing the joy they were to thee of old.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nGod speed thee! and as meed for bringing them\r\n\r\nMay Providence deal with thee kindlier\r\n\r\nThan it has dealt with me! O children mine,\r\n\r\nWhere are ye? Let me clasp you with these hands,\r\n\r\nA brother's hands, a father's; hands that made\r\n\r\nLack-luster sockets of his once bright eyes;\r\n\r\nHands of a man who blindly, recklessly,\r\n\r\nBecame your sire by her from whom he sprang.\r\n\r\nThough I cannot behold you, I must weep\r\n\r\nIn thinking of the evil days to come,\r\n\r\nThe slights and wrongs that men will put upon you.\r\n\r\nWhere'er ye go to feast or festival,\r\n\r\nNo merrymaking will it prove for you,\r\n\r\nBut oft abashed in tears ye will return.\r\n\r\nAnd when ye come to marriageable years,\r\n\r\nWhere's the bold wooers who will jeopardize\r\n\r\nTo take unto himself such disrepute\r\n\r\nAs to my children's children still must cling,\r\n\r\nFor what of infamy is lacking here?\r\n\r\n\"Their father slew his father, sowed the seed\r\n\r\nWhere he himself was gendered, and begat\r\n\r\nThese maidens at the source wherefrom he sprang.\"\r\n\r\nSuch are the gibes that men will cast at you.\r\n\r\nWho then will wed you? None, I ween, but ye\r\n\r\nMust pine, poor maids, in single barrenness.\r\n\r\nO Prince, Menoeceus' son, to thee, I turn,\r\n\r\nWith the it rests to father them, for we\r\n\r\nTheir natural parents, both of us, are lost.\r\n\r\nO leave them not to wander poor, unwed,\r\n\r\nThy kin, nor let them share my low estate.\r\n\r\nO pity them so young, and but for thee\r\n\r\nAll destitute. Thy hand upon it, Prince.\r\n\r\nTo you, my children I had much to say,\r\n\r\nWere ye but ripe to hear. Let this suffice:\r\n\r\nPray ye may find some home and live content,\r\n\r\nAnd may your lot prove happier than your sire's.\r\n

CREON<\/h3>\r\nThou hast had enough of weeping; pass within.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nI must obey,\r\n\r\nThough 'tis grievous.\r\n

CREON<\/h3>\r\nWeep not, everything must have its day.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nWell I go, but on conditions.\r\n

CREON<\/h3>\r\nWhat thy terms for going, say.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nSend me from the land an exile.\r\n

CREON<\/h3>\r\nAsk this of the gods, not me.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nBut I am the gods' abhorrence.\r\n

CREON<\/h3>\r\nThen they soon will grant thy plea.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nLead me hence, then, I am willing.\r\n

CREON<\/h3>\r\nCome, but let thy children go.\r\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\r\nRob me not of these my children!\r\n

CREON<\/h3>\r\nCrave not mastery in all,\r\n\r\nFor the mastery that raised thee was thy bane and wrought thy fall.\r\n

CHORUS<\/h3>\r\nLook ye, countrymen and Thebans, this is Oedipus the great,\r\n\r\nHe who knew the Sphinx's riddle and was mightiest in our state.\r\n\r\nWho of all our townsmen gazed not on his fame with envious eyes?\r\n\r\nNow, in what a sea of troubles sunk and overwhelmed he lies!\r\n\r\nTherefore wait to see life's ending ere thou count one mortal blest;\r\n\r\nWait till free from pain and sorrow he has gained his final rest.\r\n\r\n<\/div>","rendered":"

ARGUMENT<\/h1>\n

To Laius, King of Thebes, an oracle foretold that the child born to him by his queen Jocasta would slay his father and wed his mother. So when in time a son was born the infant’s feet were riveted together and he was left to die on Mount Cithaeron. But a shepherd found the babe and tended him, and delivered him to another shepherd who took him to his master, the King of Corinth. Polybus being childless adopted the boy, who grew up believing that he was indeed the King’s son. Afterwards doubting his parentage he inquired of the Delphic god and heard himself the word declared before to Laius. Wherefore he fled from what he deemed his father’s house and in his flight he encountered and unwillingly slew his father Laius. Arriving at Thebes he answered the riddle of the Sphinx and the grateful Thebans made their deliverer king. So he reigned in the room of Laius, and espoused the widowed queen. Children were born to them and Thebes prospered under his rule, but again a grievous plague fell upon the city. Again the oracle was consulted and it bade them purge themselves of blood-guiltiness. Oedipus denounces the crime of which he is unaware, and undertakes to track out the criminal. Step by step it is brought home to him that he is the man. The closing scene reveals Jocasta slain by her own hand and Oedipus blinded by his own act and praying for death or exile.<\/p>\n

\n

DRAMATIS PERSONAE<\/h1>\n
Oedipus.<\/div>\n
The Priest of Zeus.<\/div>\n
Creon.<\/div>\n
Chorus of Theban Elders.<\/div>\n
Teiresias.<\/div>\n
Jocasta.<\/div>\n
Messenger.<\/div>\n
Herd of Laius.<\/div>\n
Second Messenger.<\/div>\n

Scene: Thebes. Before the Palace of Oedipus.<\/h4>\n
\n

OEDIPUS THE KING<\/h1>\n
\n

Suppliants of all ages are seated round the altar at the palace doors,<\/p>\n

at their head a PRIEST OF ZEUS. To them enter OEDIPUS.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

My children, latest born to Cadmus old,<\/p>\n

Why sit ye here as suppliants, in your hands<\/p>\n

Branches of olive filleted with wool?<\/p>\n

What means this reek of incense everywhere,<\/p>\n

And everywhere laments and litanies?<\/p>\n

Children, it were not meet that I should learn<\/p>\n

From others, and am hither come, myself,<\/p>\n

I Oedipus, your world-renowned king.<\/p>\n

Ho! aged sire, whose venerable locks<\/p>\n

Proclaim thee spokesman of this company,<\/p>\n

Explain your mood and purport. Is it dread<\/p>\n

Of ill that moves you or a boon ye crave?<\/p>\n

My zeal in your behalf ye cannot doubt;<\/p>\n

Ruthless indeed were I and obdurate<\/p>\n

If such petitioners as you I spurned.<\/p>\n

PRIEST<\/h3>\n

Yea, Oedipus, my sovereign lord and king,<\/p>\n

Thou seest how both extremes of age besiege<\/p>\n

Thy palace altars\u2014fledglings hardly winged,<\/p>\n

and greybeards bowed with years; priests, as am I<\/p>\n

of Zeus, and these the flower of our youth.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the common folk, with wreathed boughs<\/p>\n

Crowd our two market-places, or before<\/p>\n

Both shrines of Pallas congregate, or where<\/p>\n

Ismenus gives his oracles by fire.<\/p>\n

For, as thou seest thyself, our ship of State,<\/p>\n

Sore buffeted, can no more lift her head,<\/p>\n

Foundered beneath a weltering surge of blood.<\/p>\n

A blight is on our harvest in the ear,<\/p>\n

A blight upon the grazing flocks and herds,<\/p>\n

A blight on wives in travail; and withal<\/p>\n

Armed with his blazing torch the God of Plague<\/p>\n

Hath swooped upon our city emptying<\/p>\n

The house of Cadmus, and the murky realm<\/p>\n

Of Pluto is full fed with groans and tears.<\/p>\n

Therefore, O King, here at thy hearth we sit,<\/p>\n

I and these children; not as deeming thee<\/p>\n

A new divinity, but the first of men;<\/p>\n

First in the common accidents of life,<\/p>\n

And first in visitations of the Gods.<\/p>\n

Art thou not he who coming to the town<\/p>\n

of Cadmus freed us from the tax we paid<\/p>\n

To the fell songstress? Nor hadst thou received<\/p>\n

Prompting from us or been by others schooled;<\/p>\n

No, by a god inspired (so all men deem,<\/p>\n

And testify) didst thou renew our life.<\/p>\n

And now, O Oedipus, our peerless king,<\/p>\n

All we thy votaries beseech thee, find<\/p>\n

Some succor, whether by a voice from heaven<\/p>\n

Whispered, or haply known by human wit.<\/p>\n

Tried counselors, methinks, are aptest found 1<\/a>To furnish for the future pregnant rede.<\/p>\n

Upraise, O chief of men, upraise our State!<\/p>\n

Look to thy laurels! for thy zeal of yore<\/p>\n

Our country’s savior thou art justly hailed:<\/p>\n

O never may we thus record thy reign:\u2014<\/p>\n

“He raised us up only to cast us down.”<\/p>\n

Uplift us, build our city on a rock.<\/p>\n

Thy happy star ascendant brought us luck,<\/p>\n

O let it not decline! If thou wouldst rule<\/p>\n

This land, as now thou reignest, better sure<\/p>\n

To rule a peopled than a desert realm.<\/p>\n

Nor battlements nor galleys aught avail,<\/p>\n

If men to man and guards to guard them tail.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Ah! my poor children, known, ah, known too well,<\/p>\n

The quest that brings you hither and your need.<\/p>\n

Ye sicken all, well wot I, yet my pain,<\/p>\n

How great soever yours, outtops it all.<\/p>\n

Your sorrow touches each man severally,<\/p>\n

Him and none other, but I grieve at once<\/p>\n

Both for the general and myself and you.<\/p>\n

Therefore ye rouse no sluggard from day-dreams.<\/p>\n

Many, my children, are the tears I’ve wept,<\/p>\n

And threaded many a maze of weary thought.<\/p>\n

Thus pondering one clue of hope I caught,<\/p>\n

And tracked it up; I have sent Menoeceus’ son,<\/p>\n

Creon, my consort’s brother, to inquire<\/p>\n

Of Pythian Phoebus at his Delphic shrine,<\/p>\n

How I might save the State by act or word.<\/p>\n

And now I reckon up the tale of days<\/p>\n

Since he set forth, and marvel how he fares.<\/p>\n

‘Tis strange, this endless tarrying, passing strange.<\/p>\n

But when he comes, then I were base indeed,<\/p>\n

If I perform not all the god declares.<\/p>\n

PRIEST<\/h3>\n

Thy words are well timed; even as thou speakest<\/p>\n

That shouting tells me Creon is at hand.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

O King Apollo! may his joyous looks<\/p>\n

Be presage of the joyous news he brings!<\/p>\n

PRIEST<\/h3>\n

As I surmise, ’tis welcome; else his head<\/p>\n

Had scarce been crowned with berry-laden bays.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

We soon shall know; he’s now in earshot range.<\/p>\n

[Enter CREON]<\/p>\n

My royal cousin, say, Menoeceus’ child,<\/p>\n

What message hast thou brought us from the god?<\/p>\n

CREON<\/h3>\n

Good news, for e’en intolerable ills,<\/p>\n

Finding right issue, tend to naught but good.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

How runs the oracle? thus far thy words<\/p>\n

Give me no ground for confidence or fear.<\/p>\n

CREON<\/h3>\n

If thou wouldst hear my message publicly,<\/p>\n

I’ll tell thee straight, or with thee pass within.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Speak before all; the burden that I bear<\/p>\n

Is more for these my subjects than myself.<\/p>\n

CREON<\/h3>\n

Let me report then all the god declared.<\/p>\n

King Phoebus bids us straitly extirpate<\/p>\n

A fell pollution that infests the land,<\/p>\n

And no more harbor an inveterate sore.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

What expiation means he? What’s amiss?<\/p>\n

CREON<\/h3>\n

Banishment, or the shedding blood for blood.<\/p>\n

This stain of blood makes shipwreck of our state.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Whom can he mean, the miscreant thus denounced?<\/p>\n

CREON<\/h3>\n

Before thou didst assume the helm of State,<\/p>\n

The sovereign of this land was Laius.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

I heard as much, but never saw the man.<\/p>\n

CREON<\/h3>\n

He fell; and now the god’s command is plain:<\/p>\n

Punish his takers-off, whoe’er they be.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Where are they? Where in the wide world to find<\/p>\n

The far, faint traces of a bygone crime?<\/p>\n

CREON<\/h3>\n

In this land, said the god; “who seeks shall find;<\/p>\n

Who sits with folded hands or sleeps is blind.”<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Was he within his palace, or afield,<\/p>\n

Or traveling, when Laius met his fate?<\/p>\n

CREON<\/h3>\n

Abroad; he started, so he told us, bound<\/p>\n

For Delphi, but he never thence returned.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Came there no news, no fellow-traveler<\/p>\n

To give some clue that might be followed up?<\/p>\n

CREON<\/h3>\n

But one escape, who flying for dear life,<\/p>\n

Could tell of all he saw but one thing sure.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

And what was that? One clue might lead us far,<\/p>\n

With but a spark of hope to guide our quest.<\/p>\n

CREON<\/h3>\n

Robbers, he told us, not one bandit but<\/p>\n

A troop of knaves, attacked and murdered him.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Did any bandit dare so bold a stroke,<\/p>\n

Unless indeed he were suborned from Thebes?<\/p>\n

CREON<\/h3>\n

So ’twas surmised, but none was found to avenge<\/p>\n

His murder mid the trouble that ensued.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

What trouble can have hindered a full quest,<\/p>\n

When royalty had fallen thus miserably?<\/p>\n

CREON<\/h3>\n

The riddling Sphinx compelled us to let slide<\/p>\n

The dim past and attend to instant needs.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Well, I<\/i> will start afresh and once again<\/p>\n

Make dark things clear. Right worthy the concern<\/p>\n

Of Phoebus, worthy thine too, for the dead;<\/p>\n

I also, as is meet, will lend my aid<\/p>\n

To avenge this wrong to Thebes and to the god.<\/p>\n

Not for some far-off kinsman, but myself,<\/p>\n

Shall I expel this poison in the blood;<\/p>\n

For whoso slew that king might have a mind<\/p>\n

To strike me too with his assassin hand.<\/p>\n

Therefore in righting him I serve myself.<\/p>\n

Up, children, haste ye, quit these altar stairs,<\/p>\n

Take hence your suppliant wands, go summon hither<\/p>\n

The Theban commons. With the god’s good help<\/p>\n

Success is sure; ’tis ruin if we fail.<\/p>\n

[Exeunt OEDIPUS and CREON]<\/p>\n

PRIEST<\/h3>\n

Come, children, let us hence; these gracious words<\/p>\n

Forestall the very purpose of our suit.<\/p>\n

And may the god who sent this oracle<\/p>\n

Save us withal and rid us of this pest.<\/p>\n

[Exeunt PRIEST and SUPPLIANTS]<\/p>\n

CHORUS<\/h3>\n

(Str. 1)<\/p>\n

Sweet-voiced daughter of Zeus from thy gold-paved Pythian shrine<\/p>\n

Wafted to Thebes divine,<\/p>\n

What dost thou bring me? My soul is racked and shivers with fear.<\/p>\n

(Healer of Delos, hear!)<\/p>\n

Hast thou some pain unknown before,<\/p>\n

Or with the circling years renewest a penance of yore?<\/p>\n

Offspring of golden Hope, thou voice immortal, O tell me.<\/p>\n

(Ant. 1)<\/p>\n

First on Athene I call; O Zeus-born goddess, defend!<\/p>\n

Goddess and sister, befriend,<\/p>\n

Artemis, Lady of Thebes, high-throned in the midst of our mart!<\/p>\n

Lord of the death-winged dart! Your threefold aid I crave From death and ruin our city to save.<\/p>\n

If in the days of old when we nigh had perished, ye drave<\/p>\n

From our land the fiery plague, be near us now and defend us!<\/p>\n

(Str. 2) Ah me, what countless woes are mine! All our host is in decline; Weaponless my spirit lies. Earth her gracious fruits denies; Women wail in barren throes; Life on life downstriken goes, Swifter than the wind bird’s flight, Swifter than the Fire-God’s might, To the westering shores of Night. (Ant. 2) Wasted thus by death on death All our city perisheth. Corpses spread infection round; None to tend or mourn is found. Wailing on the altar stair Wives and grandams rend the air\u2014 Long-drawn moans and piercing cries Blent with prayers and litanies. Golden child of Zeus, O hear Let thine angel face appear! (Str. 3)<\/p>\n

And grant that Ares whose hot breath I feel,<\/p>\n

Though without targe or steel<\/p>\n

He stalks, whose voice is as the battle shout,<\/p>\n

May turn in sudden rout,<\/p>\n

To the unharbored Thracian waters sped,<\/p>\n

Or Amphitrite’s bed. For what night leaves undone, Smit by the morrow’s sun<\/p>\n

Perisheth. Father Zeus, whose hand<\/p>\n

Doth wield the lightning brand,<\/p>\n

Slay him beneath thy levin bold, we pray,<\/p>\n

Slay him, O slay! (Ant. 3)<\/p>\n

O that thine arrows too, Lycean King,<\/p>\n

From that taut bow’s gold string,<\/p>\n

Might fly abroad, the champions of our rights;<\/p>\n

Yea, and the flashing lights<\/p>\n

Of Artemis, wherewith the huntress sweeps<\/p>\n

Across the Lycian steeps.<\/p>\n

Thee too I call with golden-snooded hair,<\/p>\n

Whose name our land doth bear,<\/p>\n

Bacchus to whom thy Maenads Evoe shout;<\/p>\n

Come with thy bright torch, rout, Blithe god whom we adore, The god whom gods abhor. [Enter OEDIPUS.]<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Ye pray; ’tis well, but would ye hear my words<\/p>\n

And heed them and apply the remedy,<\/p>\n

Ye might perchance find comfort and relief.<\/p>\n

Mind you, I speak as one who comes a stranger<\/p>\n

To this report, no less than to the crime;<\/p>\n

For how unaided could I track it far<\/p>\n

Without a clue? Which lacking (for too late<\/p>\n

Was I enrolled a citizen of Thebes)<\/p>\n

This proclamation I address to all:\u2014<\/p>\n

Thebans, if any knows the man by whom<\/p>\n

Laius, son of Labdacus, was slain,<\/p>\n

I summon him to make clean shrift to me.<\/p>\n

And if he shrinks, let him reflect that thus<\/p>\n

Confessing he shall ‘scape the capital charge;<\/p>\n

For the worst penalty that shall befall him<\/p>\n

Is banishment\u2014unscathed he shall depart.<\/p>\n

But if an alien from a foreign land<\/p>\n

Be known to any as the murderer,<\/p>\n

Let him who knows speak out, and he shall have<\/p>\n

Due recompense from me and thanks to boot.<\/p>\n

But if ye still keep silence, if through fear<\/p>\n

For self or friends ye disregard my hest,<\/p>\n

Hear what I then resolve; I lay my ban<\/p>\n

On the assassin whosoe’er he be.<\/p>\n

Let no man in this land, whereof I hold<\/p>\n

The sovereign rule, harbor or speak to him;<\/p>\n

Give him no part in prayer or sacrifice<\/p>\n

Or lustral rites, but hound him from your homes.<\/p>\n

For this is our defilement, so the god<\/p>\n

Hath lately shown to me by oracles.<\/p>\n

Thus as their champion I maintain the cause<\/p>\n

Both of the god and of the murdered King.<\/p>\n

And on the murderer this curse I lay<\/p>\n

(On him and all the partners in his guilt):\u2014<\/p>\n

Wretch, may he pine in utter wretchedness!<\/p>\n

And for myself, if with my privity<\/p>\n

He gain admittance to my hearth, I pray<\/p>\n

The curse I laid on others fall on me.<\/p>\n

See that ye give effect to all my hest,<\/p>\n

For my sake and the god’s and for our land,<\/p>\n

A desert blasted by the wrath of heaven.<\/p>\n

For, let alone the god’s express command,<\/p>\n

It were a scandal ye should leave unpurged<\/p>\n

The murder of a great man and your king,<\/p>\n

Nor track it home. And now that I am lord,<\/p>\n

Successor to his throne, his bed, his wife,<\/p>\n

(And had he not been frustrate in the hope<\/p>\n

Of issue, common children of one womb<\/p>\n

Had forced a closer bond twixt him and me,<\/p>\n

But Fate swooped down upon him), therefore I<\/p>\n

His blood-avenger will maintain his cause<\/p>\n

As though he were my sire, and leave no stone<\/p>\n

Unturned to track the assassin or avenge<\/p>\n

The son of Labdacus, of Polydore,<\/p>\n

Of Cadmus, and Agenor first of the race.<\/p>\n

And for the disobedient thus I pray:<\/p>\n

May the gods send them neither timely fruits<\/p>\n

Of earth, nor teeming increase of the womb,<\/p>\n

But may they waste and pine, as now they waste,<\/p>\n

Aye and worse stricken; but to all of you,<\/p>\n

My loyal subjects who approve my acts,<\/p>\n

May Justice, our ally, and all the gods<\/p>\n

Be gracious and attend you evermore.<\/p>\n

CHORUS<\/h3>\n

The oath thou profferest, sire, I take and swear.<\/p>\n

I slew him not myself, nor can I name<\/p>\n

The slayer. For the quest, ’twere well, methinks<\/p>\n

That Phoebus, who proposed the riddle, himself<\/p>\n

Should give the answer\u2014who the murderer was.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Well argued; but no living man can hope<\/p>\n

To force the gods to speak against their will.<\/p>\n

CHORUS<\/h3>\n

May I then say what seems next best to me?<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Aye, if there be a third best, tell it too.<\/p>\n

CHORUS<\/h3>\n

My liege, if any man sees eye to eye<\/p>\n

With our lord Phoebus, ’tis our prophet, lord<\/p>\n

Teiresias; he of all men best might guide<\/p>\n

A searcher of this matter to the light.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Here too my zeal has nothing lagged, for twice<\/p>\n

At Creon’s instance have I sent to fetch him,<\/p>\n

And long I marvel why he is not here.<\/p>\n

CHORUS<\/h3>\n

I mind me too of rumors long ago\u2014<\/p>\n

Mere gossip.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Tell them, I would fain know all.<\/p>\n

CHORUS<\/h3>\n

‘Twas said he fell by travelers.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

So I heard,<\/p>\n

But none has seen the man who saw him fall.<\/p>\n

CHORUS<\/h3>\n

Well, if he knows what fear is, he will quail<\/p>\n

And flee before the terror of thy curse.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Words scare not him who blenches not at deeds.<\/p>\n

CHORUS<\/h3>\n

But here is one to arraign him. Lo, at length<\/p>\n

They bring the god-inspired seer in whom<\/p>\n

Above all other men is truth inborn.<\/p>\n

[Enter TEIRESIAS, led by a boy.]<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Teiresias, seer who comprehendest all,<\/p>\n

Lore of the wise and hidden mysteries,<\/p>\n

High things of heaven and low things of the earth,<\/p>\n

Thou knowest, though thy blinded eyes see naught,<\/p>\n

What plague infects our city; and we turn<\/p>\n

To thee, O seer, our one defense and shield.<\/p>\n

The purport of the answer that the God<\/p>\n

Returned to us who sought his oracle,<\/p>\n

The messengers have doubtless told thee\u2014how<\/p>\n

One course alone could rid us of the pest,<\/p>\n

To find the murderers of Laius,<\/p>\n

And slay them or expel them from the land.<\/p>\n

Therefore begrudging neither augury<\/p>\n

Nor other divination that is thine,<\/p>\n

O save thyself, thy country, and thy king,<\/p>\n

Save all from this defilement of blood shed.<\/p>\n

On thee we rest. This is man’s highest end,<\/p>\n

To others’ service all his powers to lend.<\/p>\n

TEIRESIAS<\/h3>\n

Alas, alas, what misery to be wise<\/p>\n

When wisdom profits nothing! This old lore<\/p>\n

I had forgotten; else I were not here.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

What ails thee? Why this melancholy mood?<\/p>\n

TEIRESIAS<\/h3>\n

Let me go home; prevent me not; ’twere best<\/p>\n

That thou shouldst bear thy burden and I mine.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

For shame! no true-born Theban patriot<\/p>\n

Would thus withhold the word of prophecy.<\/p>\n

TEIRESIAS<\/h3>\n

Thy<\/i> words, O king, are wide of the mark, and I<\/p>\n

For fear lest I too trip like thee…<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Oh speak,<\/p>\n

Withhold not, I adjure thee, if thou know’st,<\/p>\n

Thy knowledge. We are all thy suppliants.<\/p>\n

TEIRESIAS<\/h3>\n

Aye, for ye all are witless, but my voice<\/p>\n

Will ne’er reveal my miseries\u2014or thine. 2<\/a><\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

What then, thou knowest, and yet willst not speak!<\/p>\n

Wouldst thou betray us and destroy the State?<\/p>\n

TEIRESIAS<\/h3>\n

I will not vex myself nor thee. Why ask<\/p>\n

Thus idly what from me thou shalt not learn?<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Monster! thy silence would incense a flint.<\/p>\n

Will nothing loose thy tongue? Can nothing melt thee,<\/p>\n

Or shake thy dogged taciturnity?<\/p>\n

TEIRESIAS<\/h3>\n

Thou blam’st my mood and seest not thine own<\/p>\n

Wherewith thou art mated; no, thou taxest me.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

And who could stay his choler when he heard<\/p>\n

How insolently thou dost flout the State?<\/p>\n

TEIRESIAS<\/h3>\n

Well, it will come what will, though I be mute.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Since come it must, thy duty is to tell me.<\/p>\n

TEIRESIAS<\/h3>\n

I have no more to say; storm as thou willst,<\/p>\n

And give the rein to all thy pent-up rage.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Yea, I am wroth, and will not stint my words,<\/p>\n

But speak my whole mind. Thou methinks thou art he,<\/p>\n

Who planned the crime, aye, and performed it too,<\/p>\n

All save the assassination; and if thou<\/p>\n

Hadst not been blind, I had been sworn to boot<\/p>\n

That thou alone didst do the bloody deed.<\/p>\n

TEIRESIAS<\/h3>\n

Is it so? Then I charge thee to abide<\/p>\n

By thine own proclamation; from this day<\/p>\n

Speak not to these or me. Thou art the man,<\/p>\n

Thou the accursed polluter of this land.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Vile slanderer, thou blurtest forth these taunts,<\/p>\n

And think’st forsooth as seer to go scot free.<\/p>\n

TEIRESIAS<\/h3>\n

Yea, I am free, strong in the strength of truth.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Who was thy teacher? not methinks thy art.<\/p>\n

TEIRESIAS<\/h3>\n

Thou, goading me against my will to speak.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

What speech? repeat it and resolve my doubt.<\/p>\n

TEIRESIAS<\/h3>\n

Didst miss my sense wouldst thou goad me on?<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

I but half caught thy meaning; say it again.<\/p>\n

TEIRESIAS<\/h3>\n

I say thou art the murderer of the man<\/p>\n

Whose murderer thou pursuest.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Thou shalt rue it<\/p>\n

Twice to repeat so gross a calumny.<\/p>\n

TEIRESIAS<\/h3>\n

Must I say more to aggravate thy rage?<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Say all thou wilt; it will be but waste of breath.<\/p>\n

TEIRESIAS<\/h3>\n

I say thou livest with thy nearest kin<\/p>\n

In infamy, unwitting in thy shame.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Think’st thou for aye unscathed to wag thy tongue?<\/p>\n

TEIRESIAS<\/h3>\n

Yea, if the might of truth can aught prevail.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

With other men, but not with thee, for thou<\/p>\n

In ear, wit, eye, in everything art blind.<\/p>\n

TEIRESIAS<\/h3>\n

Poor fool to utter gibes at me which all<\/p>\n

Here present will cast back on thee ere long.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Offspring of endless Night, thou hast no power<\/p>\n

O’er me or any man who sees the sun.<\/p>\n

TEIRESIAS<\/h3>\n

No, for thy weird is not to fall by me.<\/p>\n

I leave to Apollo what concerns the god.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Is this a plot of Creon, or thine own?<\/p>\n

TEIRESIAS<\/h3>\n

Not Creon, thou thyself art thine own bane.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

O wealth and empiry and skill by skill<\/p>\n

Outwitted in the battlefield of life,<\/p>\n

What spite and envy follow in your train!<\/p>\n

See, for this crown the State conferred on me.<\/p>\n

A gift, a thing I sought not, for this crown<\/p>\n

The trusty Creon, my familiar friend,<\/p>\n

Hath lain in wait to oust me and suborned<\/p>\n

This mountebank, this juggling charlatan,<\/p>\n

This tricksy beggar-priest, for gain alone<\/p>\n

Keen-eyed, but in his proper art stone-blind.<\/p>\n

Say, sirrah, hast thou ever proved thyself<\/p>\n

A prophet? When the riddling Sphinx was here<\/p>\n

Why hadst thou no deliverance for this folk?<\/p>\n

And yet the riddle was not to be solved<\/p>\n

By guess-work but required the prophet’s art;<\/p>\n

Wherein thou wast found lacking; neither birds<\/p>\n

Nor sign from heaven helped thee, but I<\/i> came,<\/p>\n

The simple Oedipus; I<\/i> stopped her mouth<\/p>\n

By mother wit, untaught of auguries.<\/p>\n

This is the man whom thou wouldst undermine,<\/p>\n

In hope to reign with Creon in my stead.<\/p>\n

Methinks that thou and thine abettor soon<\/p>\n

Will rue your plot to drive the scapegoat out.<\/p>\n

Thank thy grey hairs that thou hast still to learn<\/p>\n

What chastisement such arrogance deserves.<\/p>\n

CHORUS<\/h3>\n

To us it seems that both the seer and thou,<\/p>\n

O Oedipus, have spoken angry words.<\/p>\n

This is no time to wrangle but consult<\/p>\n

How best we may fulfill the oracle.<\/p>\n

TEIRESIAS<\/h3>\n

King as thou art, free speech at least is mine<\/p>\n

To make reply; in this I am thy peer.<\/p>\n

I own no lord but Loxias; him I serve<\/p>\n

And ne’er can stand enrolled as Creon’s man.<\/p>\n

Thus then I answer: since thou hast not spared<\/p>\n

To twit me with my blindness\u2014thou hast eyes,<\/p>\n

Yet see’st not in what misery thou art fallen,<\/p>\n

Nor where thou dwellest nor with whom for mate.<\/p>\n

Dost know thy lineage? Nay, thou know’st it not,<\/p>\n

And all unwitting art a double foe<\/p>\n

To thine own kin, the living and the dead;<\/p>\n

Aye and the dogging curse of mother and sire<\/p>\n

One day shall drive thee, like a two-edged sword,<\/p>\n

Beyond our borders, and the eyes that now<\/p>\n

See clear shall henceforward endless night.<\/p>\n

Ah whither shall thy bitter cry not reach,<\/p>\n

What crag in all Cithaeron but shall then<\/p>\n

Reverberate thy wail, when thou hast found<\/p>\n

With what a hymeneal thou wast borne<\/p>\n

Home, but to no fair haven, on the gale!<\/p>\n

Aye, and a flood of ills thou guessest not<\/p>\n

Shall set thyself and children in one line.<\/p>\n

Flout then both Creon and my words, for none<\/p>\n

Of mortals shall be striken worse than thou.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Must I endure this fellow’s insolence?<\/p>\n

A murrain on thee! Get thee hence! Begone<\/p>\n

Avaunt! and never cross my threshold more.<\/p>\n

TEIRESIAS<\/h3>\n

I ne’er had come hadst thou not bidden me.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

I know not thou wouldst utter folly, else<\/p>\n

Long hadst thou waited to be summoned here.<\/p>\n

TEIRESIAS<\/h3>\n

Such am I\u2014as it seems to thee a fool,<\/p>\n

But to the parents who begat thee, wise.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

What sayest thou\u2014”parents”? Who begat me, speak?<\/p>\n

TEIRESIAS<\/h3>\n

This day shall be thy birth-day, and thy grave.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Thou lov’st to speak in riddles and dark words.<\/p>\n

TEIRESIAS<\/h3>\n

In reading riddles who so skilled as thou?<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Twit me with that wherein my greatness lies.<\/p>\n

TEIRESIAS<\/h3>\n

And yet this very greatness proved thy bane.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

No matter if I saved the commonwealth.<\/p>\n

TEIRESIAS<\/h3>\n

‘Tis time I left thee. Come, boy, take me home.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Aye, take him quickly, for his presence irks<\/p>\n

And lets me; gone, thou canst not plague me more.<\/p>\n

TEIRESIAS<\/h3>\n

I go, but first will tell thee why I came.<\/p>\n

Thy frown I dread not, for thou canst not harm me.<\/p>\n

Hear then: this man whom thou hast sought to arrest<\/p>\n

With threats and warrants this long while, the wretch<\/p>\n

Who murdered Laius\u2014that man is here.<\/p>\n

He passes for an alien in the land<\/p>\n

But soon shall prove a Theban, native born.<\/p>\n

And yet his fortune brings him little joy;<\/p>\n

For blind of seeing, clad in beggar’s weeds,<\/p>\n

For purple robes, and leaning on his staff,<\/p>\n

To a strange land he soon shall grope his way.<\/p>\n

And of the children, inmates of his home,<\/p>\n

He shall be proved the brother and the sire,<\/p>\n

Of her who bare him son and husband both,<\/p>\n

Co-partner, and assassin of his sire.<\/p>\n

Go in and ponder this, and if thou find<\/p>\n

That I have missed the mark, henceforth declare<\/p>\n

I have no wit nor skill in prophecy.<\/p>\n

[Exeunt TEIRESIAS and OEDIPUS]<\/p>\n

CHORUS<\/h3>\n

(Str. 1)<\/p>\n

Who is he by voice immortal named from Pythia’s rocky cell,<\/p>\n

Doer of foul deeds of bloodshed, horrors that no tongue can tell?<\/p>\n

A foot for flight he needs Fleeter than storm-swift steeds, For on his heels doth follow,<\/p>\n

Armed with the lightnings of his Sire, Apollo.<\/p>\n

Like sleuth-hounds too The Fates pursue. (Ant. 1)<\/p>\n

Yea, but now flashed forth the summons from Parnassus’ snowy peak,<\/p>\n

“Near and far the undiscovered doer of this murder seek!” Now like a sullen bull he roves Through forest brakes and upland groves, And vainly seeks to fly The doom that ever nigh Flits o’er his head,<\/p>\n

Still by the avenging Phoebus sped,<\/p>\n

The voice divine, From Earth’s mid shrine. (Str. 2)<\/p>\n

Sore perplexed am I by the words of the master seer.<\/p>\n

Are they true, are they false? I know not and bridle my tongue for fear,<\/p>\n

Fluttered with vague surmise; nor present nor future is clear.<\/p>\n

Quarrel of ancient date or in days still near know I none<\/p>\n

Twixt the Labdacidan house and our ruler, Polybus’ son.<\/p>\n

Proof is there none: how then can I challenge our King’s good name,<\/p>\n

How in a blood-feud join for an untracked deed of shame?<\/p>\n

(Ant. 2)<\/p>\n

All wise are Zeus and Apollo, and nothing is hid from their ken;<\/p>\n

They are gods; and in wits a man may surpass his fellow men;<\/p>\n

But that a mortal seer knows more than I know\u2014where<\/p>\n

Hath this been proven? Or how without sign assured, can I blame<\/p>\n

Him who saved our State when the winged songstress came,<\/p>\n

Tested and tried in the light of us all, like gold assayed?<\/p>\n

How can I now assent when a crime is on Oedipus laid?<\/p>\n

CREON<\/h3>\n

Friends, countrymen, I learn King Oedipus<\/p>\n

Hath laid against me a most grievous charge,<\/p>\n

And come to you protesting. If he deems<\/p>\n

That I have harmed or injured him in aught<\/p>\n

By word or deed in this our present trouble,<\/p>\n

I care not to prolong the span of life,<\/p>\n

Thus ill-reputed; for the calumny<\/p>\n

Hits not a single blot, but blasts my name,<\/p>\n

If by the general voice I am denounced<\/p>\n

False to the State and false by you my friends.<\/p>\n

CHORUS<\/h3>\n

This taunt, it well may be, was blurted out<\/p>\n

In petulance, not spoken advisedly.<\/p>\n

CREON<\/h3>\n

Did any dare pretend that it was I<\/p>\n

Prompted the seer to utter a forged charge?<\/p>\n

CHORUS<\/h3>\n

Such things were said; with what intent I know not.<\/p>\n

CREON<\/h3>\n

Were not his wits and vision all astray<\/p>\n

When upon me he fixed this monstrous charge?<\/p>\n

CHORUS<\/h3>\n

I know not; to my sovereign’s acts I am blind.<\/p>\n

But lo, he comes to answer for himself.<\/p>\n

[Enter OEDIPUS.]<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Sirrah, what mak’st thou here? Dost thou presume<\/p>\n

To approach my doors, thou brazen-faced rogue,<\/p>\n

My murderer and the filcher of my crown?<\/p>\n

Come, answer this, didst thou detect in me<\/p>\n

Some touch of cowardice or witlessness,<\/p>\n

That made thee undertake this enterprise?<\/p>\n

I seemed forsooth too simple to perceive<\/p>\n

The serpent stealing on me in the dark,<\/p>\n

Or else too weak to scotch it when I saw.<\/p>\n

This thou<\/i> art witless seeking to possess<\/p>\n

Without a following or friends the crown,<\/p>\n

A prize that followers and wealth must win.<\/p>\n

CREON<\/h3>\n

Attend me. Thou hast spoken, ’tis my turn<\/p>\n

To make reply. Then having heard me, judge.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Thou art glib of tongue, but I am slow to learn<\/p>\n

Of thee; I know too well thy venomous hate.<\/p>\n

CREON<\/h3>\n

First I would argue out this very point.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

O argue not that thou art not a rogue.<\/p>\n

CREON<\/h3>\n

If thou dost count a virtue stubbornness,<\/p>\n

Unschooled by reason, thou art much astray.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

If thou dost hold a kinsman may be wronged,<\/p>\n

And no pains follow, thou art much to seek.<\/p>\n

CREON<\/h3>\n

Therein thou judgest rightly, but this wrong<\/p>\n

That thou allegest\u2014tell me what it is.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Didst thou or didst thou not advise that I<\/p>\n

Should call the priest?<\/p>\n

CREON<\/h3>\n

Yes, and I stand to it.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Tell me how long is it since Laius…<\/p>\n

CREON<\/h3>\n

Since Laius…? I follow not thy drift.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

By violent hands was spirited away.<\/p>\n

CREON<\/h3>\n

In the dim past, a many years agone.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Did the same prophet then pursue his craft?<\/p>\n

CREON<\/h3>\n

Yes, skilled as now and in no less repute.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Did he at that time ever glance at me?<\/p>\n

CREON<\/h3>\n

Not to my knowledge, not when I was by.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

But was no search and inquisition made?<\/p>\n

CREON<\/h3>\n

Surely full quest was made, but nothing learnt.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Why failed the seer to tell his story then<\/i>?<\/p>\n

CREON<\/h3>\n

I know not, and not knowing hold my tongue.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

This much thou knowest and canst surely tell.<\/p>\n

CREON<\/h3>\n

What’s mean’st thou? All I know I will declare.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

But for thy prompting never had the seer<\/p>\n

Ascribed to me the death of Laius.<\/p>\n

CREON<\/h3>\n

If so he thou knowest best; but I<\/p>\n

Would put thee to the question in my turn.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Question and prove me murderer if thou canst.<\/p>\n

CREON<\/h3>\n

Then let me ask thee, didst thou wed my sister?<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

A fact so plain I cannot well deny.<\/p>\n

CREON<\/h3>\n

And as thy consort queen she shares the throne?<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

I grant her freely all her heart desires.<\/p>\n

CREON<\/h3>\n

And with you twain I share the triple rule?<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Yea, and it is that proves thee a false friend.<\/p>\n

CREON<\/h3>\n

Not so, if thou wouldst reason with thyself,<\/p>\n

As I with myself. First, I bid thee think,<\/p>\n

Would any mortal choose a troubled reign<\/p>\n

Of terrors rather than secure repose,<\/p>\n

If the same power were given him? As for me,<\/p>\n

I have no natural craving for the name<\/p>\n

Of king, preferring to do kingly deeds,<\/p>\n

And so thinks every sober-minded man.<\/p>\n

Now all my needs are satisfied through thee,<\/p>\n

And I have naught to fear; but were I king,<\/p>\n

My acts would oft run counter to my will.<\/p>\n

How could a title then have charms for me<\/p>\n

Above the sweets of boundless influence?<\/p>\n

I am not so infatuate as to grasp<\/p>\n

The shadow when I hold the substance fast.<\/p>\n

Now all men cry me Godspeed! wish me well,<\/p>\n

And every suitor seeks to gain my ear,<\/p>\n

If he would hope to win a grace from thee.<\/p>\n

Why should I leave the better, choose the worse?<\/p>\n

That were sheer madness, and I am not mad.<\/p>\n

No such ambition ever tempted me,<\/p>\n

Nor would I have a share in such intrigue.<\/p>\n

And if thou doubt me, first to Delphi go,<\/p>\n

There ascertain if my report was true<\/p>\n

Of the god’s answer; next investigate<\/p>\n

If with the seer I plotted or conspired,<\/p>\n

And if it prove so, sentence me to death,<\/p>\n

Not by thy voice alone, but mine and thine.<\/p>\n

But O condemn me not, without appeal,<\/p>\n

On bare suspicion. ‘Tis not right to adjudge<\/p>\n

Bad men at random good, or good men bad.<\/p>\n

I would as lief a man should cast away<\/p>\n

The thing he counts most precious, his own life,<\/p>\n

As spurn a true friend. Thou wilt learn in time<\/p>\n

The truth, for time alone reveals the just;<\/p>\n

A villain is detected in a day.<\/p>\n

CHORUS<\/h3>\n

To one who walketh warily his words<\/p>\n

Commend themselves; swift counsels are not sure.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

When with swift strides the stealthy plotter stalks<\/p>\n

I must be quick too with my counterplot.<\/p>\n

To wait his onset passively, for him<\/p>\n

Is sure success, for me assured defeat.<\/p>\n

CREON<\/h3>\n

What then’s thy will? To banish me the land?<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

I would not have thee banished, no, but dead,<\/p>\n

That men may mark the wages envy reaps.<\/p>\n

CREON<\/h3>\n

I see thou wilt not yield, nor credit me.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

[None but a fool would credit such as thou.] 3<\/a><\/p>\n

CREON<\/h3>\n

Thou art not wise.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Wise for myself at least.<\/p>\n

CREON<\/h3>\n

Why not for me too?<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Why for such a knave?<\/p>\n

CREON<\/h3>\n

Suppose thou lackest sense.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Yet kings must rule.<\/p>\n

CREON<\/h3>\n

Not if they rule ill.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Oh my Thebans, hear him!<\/p>\n

CREON<\/h3>\n

Thy Thebans? am not I a Theban too?<\/p>\n

CHORUS<\/h3>\n

Cease, princes; lo there comes, and none too soon,<\/p>\n

Jocasta from the palace. Who so fit<\/p>\n

As peacemaker to reconcile your feud?<\/p>\n

[Enter JOCASTA.]<\/p>\n

JOCASTA<\/h3>\n

Misguided princes, why have ye upraised<\/p>\n

This wordy wrangle? Are ye not ashamed,<\/p>\n

While the whole land lies striken, thus to voice<\/p>\n

Your private injuries? Go in, my lord;<\/p>\n

Go home, my brother, and forebear to make<\/p>\n

A public scandal of a petty grief.<\/p>\n

CREON<\/h3>\n

My royal sister, Oedipus, thy lord,<\/p>\n

Hath bid me choose (O dread alternative!)<\/p>\n

An outlaw’s exile or a felon’s death.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Yes, lady; I have caught him practicing<\/p>\n

Against my royal person his vile arts.<\/p>\n

CREON<\/h3>\n

May I ne’er speed but die accursed, if I<\/p>\n

In any way am guilty of this charge.<\/p>\n

JOCASTA<\/h3>\n

Believe him, I adjure thee, Oedipus,<\/p>\n

First for his solemn oath’s sake, then for mine,<\/p>\n

And for thine elders’ sake who wait on thee.<\/p>\n

CHORUS<\/h3>\n

(Str. 1)<\/p>\n

Hearken, King, reflect, we pray thee, but not stubborn but relent.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Say to what should I consent?<\/p>\n

CHORUS<\/h3>\n

Respect a man whose probity and troth<\/p>\n

Are known to all and now confirmed by oath.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Dost know what grace thou cravest?<\/p>\n

CHORUS<\/h3>\n

Yea, I know.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Declare it then and make thy meaning plain.<\/p>\n

CHORUS<\/h3>\n

Brand not a friend whom babbling tongues assail;<\/p>\n

Let not suspicion ‘gainst his oath prevail.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Bethink you that in seeking this ye seek<\/p>\n

In very sooth my death or banishment?<\/p>\n

CHORUS<\/h3>\n

No, by the leader of the host divine!<\/p>\n

(Str. 2)<\/p>\n

Witness, thou Sun, such thought was never mine,<\/p>\n

Unblest, unfriended may I perish,<\/p>\n

If ever I such wish did cherish!<\/p>\n

But O my heart is desolate<\/p>\n

Musing on our striken State,<\/p>\n

Doubly fall’n should discord grow<\/p>\n

Twixt you twain, to crown our woe.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Well, let him go, no matter what it cost me,<\/p>\n

Or certain death or shameful banishment,<\/p>\n

For your sake I relent, not his; and him,<\/p>\n

Where’er he be, my heart shall still abhor.<\/p>\n

CREON<\/h3>\n

Thou art as sullen in thy yielding mood<\/p>\n

As in thine anger thou wast truculent.<\/p>\n

Such tempers justly plague themselves the most.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Leave me in peace and get thee gone.<\/p>\n

CREON<\/h3>\n

I go,<\/p>\n

By thee misjudged, but justified by these.<\/p>\n

[Exeunt CREON]<\/p>\n

CHORUS<\/h3>\n

(Ant. 1)<\/p>\n

Lady, lead indoors thy consort; wherefore longer here delay?<\/p>\n

JOCASTA<\/h3>\n

Tell me first how rose the fray.<\/p>\n

CHORUS<\/h3>\n

Rumors bred unjust suspicious and injustice rankles sore.<\/p>\n

JOCASTA<\/h3>\n

Were both at fault?<\/p>\n

CHORUS<\/h3>\n

Both.<\/p>\n

JOCASTA<\/h3>\n

What was the tale?<\/p>\n

CHORUS<\/h3>\n

Ask me no more. The land is sore distressed;<\/p>\n

‘Twere better sleeping ills to leave at rest.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Strange counsel, friend! I know thou mean’st me well,<\/p>\n

And yet would’st mitigate and blunt my zeal.<\/p>\n

CHORUS<\/h3>\n

(Ant. 2)<\/p>\n

King, I say it once again,<\/p>\n

Witless were I proved, insane,<\/p>\n

If I lightly put away<\/p>\n

Thee my country’s prop and stay,<\/p>\n

Pilot who, in danger sought,<\/p>\n

To a quiet haven brought<\/p>\n

Our distracted State; and now<\/p>\n

Who can guide us right but thou?<\/p>\n

JOCASTA<\/h3>\n

Let me too, I adjure thee, know, O king,<\/p>\n

What cause has stirred this unrelenting wrath.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

I will, for thou art more to me than these.<\/p>\n

Lady, the cause is Creon and his plots.<\/p>\n

JOCASTA<\/h3>\n

But what provoked the quarrel? make this clear.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

He points me out as Laius’ murderer.<\/p>\n

JOCASTA<\/h3>\n

Of his own knowledge or upon report?<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

He is too cunning to commit himself,<\/p>\n

And makes a mouthpiece of a knavish seer.<\/p>\n

JOCASTA<\/h3>\n

Then thou mayest ease thy conscience on that score.<\/p>\n

Listen and I’ll convince thee that no man<\/p>\n

Hath scot or lot in the prophetic art.<\/p>\n

Here is the proof in brief. An oracle<\/p>\n

Once came to Laius (I will not say<\/p>\n

‘Twas from the Delphic god himself, but from<\/p>\n

His ministers) declaring he was doomed<\/p>\n

To perish by the hand of his own son,<\/p>\n

A child that should be born to him by me.<\/p>\n

Now Laius\u2014so at least report affirmed\u2014<\/p>\n

Was murdered on a day by highwaymen,<\/p>\n

No natives, at a spot where three roads meet.<\/p>\n

As for the child, it was but three days old,<\/p>\n

When Laius, its ankles pierced and pinned<\/p>\n

Together, gave it to be cast away<\/p>\n

By others on the trackless mountain side.<\/p>\n

So then Apollo brought it not to pass<\/p>\n

The child should be his father’s murderer,<\/p>\n

Or the dread terror find accomplishment,<\/p>\n

And Laius be slain by his own son.<\/p>\n

Such was the prophet’s horoscope. O king,<\/p>\n

Regard it not. Whate’er the god deems fit<\/p>\n

To search, himself unaided will reveal.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

What memories, what wild tumult of the soul<\/p>\n

Came o’er me, lady, as I heard thee speak!<\/p>\n

JOCASTA<\/h3>\n

What mean’st thou? What has shocked and startled thee?<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Methought I heard thee say that Laius<\/p>\n

Was murdered at the meeting of three roads.<\/p>\n

JOCASTA<\/h3>\n

So ran the story that is current still.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Where did this happen? Dost thou know the place?<\/p>\n

JOCASTA<\/h3>\n

Phocis the land is called; the spot is where<\/p>\n

Branch roads from Delphi and from Daulis meet.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

And how long is it since these things befell?<\/p>\n

JOCASTA<\/h3>\n

‘Twas but a brief while were thou wast proclaimed<\/p>\n

Our country’s ruler that the news was brought.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

O Zeus, what hast thou willed to do with me!<\/p>\n

JOCASTA<\/h3>\n

What is it, Oedipus, that moves thee so?<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Ask me not yet; tell me the build and height<\/p>\n

Of Laius? Was he still in manhood’s prime?<\/p>\n

JOCASTA<\/h3>\n

Tall was he, and his hair was lightly strewn<\/p>\n

With silver; and not unlike thee in form.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

O woe is me! Mehtinks unwittingly<\/p>\n

I laid but now a dread curse on myself.<\/p>\n

JOCASTA<\/h3>\n

What say’st thou? When I look upon thee, my king,<\/p>\n

I tremble.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

‘Tis a dread presentiment<\/p>\n

That in the end the seer will prove not blind.<\/p>\n

One further question to resolve my doubt.<\/p>\n

JOCASTA<\/h3>\n

I quail; but ask, and I will answer all.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Had he but few attendants or a train<\/p>\n

Of armed retainers with him, like a prince?<\/p>\n

JOCASTA<\/h3>\n

They were but five in all, and one of them<\/p>\n

A herald; Laius in a mule-car rode.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Alas! ’tis clear as noonday now. But say,<\/p>\n

Lady, who carried this report to Thebes?<\/p>\n

JOCASTA<\/h3>\n

A serf, the sole survivor who returned.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Haply he is at hand or in the house?<\/p>\n

JOCASTA<\/h3>\n

No, for as soon as he returned and found<\/p>\n

Thee reigning in the stead of Laius slain,<\/p>\n

He clasped my hand and supplicated me<\/p>\n

To send him to the alps and pastures, where<\/p>\n

He might be farthest from the sight of Thebes.<\/p>\n

And so I sent him. ‘Twas an honest slave<\/p>\n

And well deserved some better recompense.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Fetch him at once. I fain would see the man.<\/p>\n

JOCASTA<\/h3>\n

He shall be brought; but wherefore summon him?<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Lady, I fear my tongue has overrun<\/p>\n

Discretion; therefore I would question him.<\/p>\n

JOCASTA<\/h3>\n

Well, he shall come, but may not I too claim<\/p>\n

To share the burden of thy heart, my king?<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

And thou shalt not be frustrate of thy wish.<\/p>\n

Now my imaginings have gone so far.<\/p>\n

Who has a higher claim that thou to hear<\/p>\n

My tale of dire adventures? Listen then.<\/p>\n

My sire was Polybus of Corinth, and<\/p>\n

My mother Merope, a Dorian;<\/p>\n

And I was held the foremost citizen,<\/p>\n

Till a strange thing befell me, strange indeed,<\/p>\n

Yet scarce deserving all the heat it stirred.<\/p>\n

A roisterer at some banquet, flown with wine,<\/p>\n

Shouted “Thou art not true son of thy sire.”<\/p>\n

It irked me, but I stomached for the nonce<\/p>\n

The insult; on the morrow I sought out<\/p>\n

My mother and my sire and questioned them.<\/p>\n

They were indignant at the random slur<\/p>\n

Cast on my parentage and did their best<\/p>\n

To comfort me, but still the venomed barb<\/p>\n

Rankled, for still the scandal spread and grew.<\/p>\n

So privily without their leave I went<\/p>\n

To Delphi, and Apollo sent me back<\/p>\n

Baulked of the knowledge that I came to seek.<\/p>\n

But other grievous things he prophesied,<\/p>\n

Woes, lamentations, mourning, portents dire;<\/p>\n

To wit I should defile my mother’s bed<\/p>\n

And raise up seed too loathsome to behold,<\/p>\n

And slay the father from whose loins I sprang.<\/p>\n

Then, lady,\u2014thou shalt hear the very truth\u2014<\/p>\n

As I drew near the triple-branching roads,<\/p>\n

A herald met me and a man who sat<\/p>\n

In a car drawn by colts\u2014as in thy tale\u2014<\/p>\n

The man in front and the old man himself<\/p>\n

Threatened to thrust me rudely from the path,<\/p>\n

Then jostled by the charioteer in wrath<\/p>\n

I struck him, and the old man, seeing this,<\/p>\n

Watched till I passed and from his car brought down<\/p>\n

Full on my head the double-pointed goad.<\/p>\n

Yet was I quits with him and more; one stroke<\/p>\n

Of my good staff sufficed to fling him clean<\/p>\n

Out of the chariot seat and laid him prone.<\/p>\n

And so I slew them every one. But if<\/p>\n

Betwixt this stranger there was aught in common<\/p>\n

With Laius, who more miserable than I,<\/p>\n

What mortal could you find more god-abhorred?<\/p>\n

Wretch whom no sojourner, no citizen<\/p>\n

May harbor or address, whom all are bound<\/p>\n

To harry from their homes. And this same curse<\/p>\n

Was laid on me, and laid by none but me.<\/p>\n

Yea with these hands all gory I pollute<\/p>\n

The bed of him I slew. Say, am I vile?<\/p>\n

Am I not utterly unclean, a wretch<\/p>\n

Doomed to be banished, and in banishment<\/p>\n

Forgo the sight of all my dearest ones,<\/p>\n

And never tread again my native earth;<\/p>\n

Or else to wed my mother and slay my sire,<\/p>\n

Polybus, who begat me and upreared?<\/p>\n

If one should say, this is the handiwork<\/p>\n

Of some inhuman power, who could blame<\/p>\n

His judgment? But, ye pure and awful gods,<\/p>\n

Forbid, forbid that I should see that day!<\/p>\n

May I be blotted out from living men<\/p>\n

Ere such a plague spot set on me its brand!<\/p>\n

CHORUS<\/h3>\n

We too, O king, are troubled; but till thou<\/p>\n

Hast questioned the survivor, still hope on.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

My hope is faint, but still enough survives<\/p>\n

To bid me bide the coming of this herd.<\/p>\n

JOCASTA<\/h3>\n

Suppose him here, what wouldst thou learn of him?<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

I’ll tell thee, lady; if his tale agrees<\/p>\n

With thine, I shall have ‘scaped calamity.<\/p>\n

JOCASTA<\/h3>\n

And what of special import did I say?<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

In thy report of what the herdsman said<\/p>\n

Laius was slain by robbers; now if he<\/p>\n

Still speaks of robbers, not a robber, I<\/p>\n

Slew him not; “one” with “many” cannot square.<\/p>\n

But if he says one lonely wayfarer,<\/p>\n

The last link wanting to my guilt is forged.<\/p>\n

JOCASTA<\/h3>\n

Well, rest assured, his tale ran thus at first,<\/p>\n

Nor can he now retract what then he said;<\/p>\n

Not I alone but all our townsfolk heard it.<\/p>\n

E’en should he vary somewhat in his story,<\/p>\n

He cannot make the death of Laius<\/p>\n

In any wise jump with the oracle.<\/p>\n

For Loxias said expressly he was doomed<\/p>\n

To die by my child’s hand, but he, poor babe,<\/p>\n

He shed no blood, but perished first himself.<\/p>\n

So much for divination. Henceforth I<\/p>\n

Will look for signs neither to right nor left.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Thou reasonest well. Still I would have thee send<\/p>\n

And fetch the bondsman hither. See to it.<\/p>\n

JOCASTA<\/h3>\n

That will I straightway. Come, let us within.<\/p>\n

I would do nothing that my lord mislikes.<\/p>\n

[Exeunt OEDIPUS and JOCASTA]<\/p>\n

CHORUS<\/h3>\n

(Str. 1)<\/p>\n

My lot be still to lead<\/p>\n

The life of innocence and fly<\/p>\n

Irreverence in word or deed,<\/p>\n

To follow still those laws ordained on high<\/p>\n

Whose birthplace is the bright ethereal sky<\/p>\n

No mortal birth they own, Olympus their progenitor alone:<\/p>\n

Ne’er shall they slumber in oblivion cold,<\/p>\n

The god in them is strong and grows not old.<\/p>\n

(Ant. 1) Of insolence is bred<\/p>\n

The tyrant; insolence full blown,<\/p>\n

With empty riches surfeited,<\/p>\n

Scales the precipitous height and grasps the throne.<\/p>\n

Then topples o’er and lies in ruin prone; No foothold on that dizzy steep.<\/p>\n

But O may Heaven the true patriot keep<\/p>\n

Who burns with emulous zeal to serve the State.<\/p>\n

God is my help and hope, on him I wait.<\/p>\n

(Str. 2)<\/p>\n

But the proud sinner, or in word or deed,<\/p>\n

That will not Justice heed, Nor reverence the shrine Of images divine,<\/p>\n

Perdition seize his vain imaginings,<\/p>\n

If, urged by greed profane, He grasps at ill-got gain,<\/p>\n

And lays an impious hand on holiest things.<\/p>\n

Who when such deeds are done Can hope heaven’s bolts to shun?<\/p>\n

If sin like this to honor can aspire,<\/p>\n

Why dance I still and lead the sacred choir?<\/p>\n

(Ant. 2)<\/p>\n

No more I’ll seek earth’s central oracle,<\/p>\n

Or Abae’s hallowed cell, Nor to Olympia bring My votive offering.<\/p>\n

If before all God’s truth be not bade plain.<\/p>\n

O Zeus, reveal thy might, King, if thou’rt named aright<\/p>\n

Omnipotent, all-seeing, as of old;<\/p>\n

For Laius is forgot; His weird, men heed it not;<\/p>\n

Apollo is forsook and faith grows cold.<\/p>\n

[Enter JOCASTA.]<\/p>\n

JOCASTA<\/h3>\n

My lords, ye look amazed to see your queen<\/p>\n

With wreaths and gifts of incense in her hands.<\/p>\n

I had a mind to visit the high shrines,<\/p>\n

For Oedipus is overwrought, alarmed<\/p>\n

With terrors manifold. He will not use<\/p>\n

His past experience, like a man of sense,<\/p>\n

To judge the present need, but lends an ear<\/p>\n

To any croaker if he augurs ill.<\/p>\n

Since then my counsels naught avail, I turn<\/p>\n

To thee, our present help in time of trouble,<\/p>\n

Apollo, Lord Lycean, and to thee<\/p>\n

My prayers and supplications here I bring.<\/p>\n

Lighten us, lord, and cleanse us from this curse!<\/p>\n

For now we all are cowed like mariners<\/p>\n

Who see their helmsman dumbstruck in the storm.<\/p>\n

[Enter Corinthian MESSENGER.]<\/p>\n

MESSENGER<\/h3>\n

My masters, tell me where the palace is<\/p>\n

Of Oedipus; or better, where’s the king.<\/p>\n

CHORUS<\/h3>\n

Here is the palace and he bides within;<\/p>\n

This is his queen the mother of his children.<\/p>\n

MESSENGER<\/h3>\n

All happiness attend her and the house,<\/p>\n

Blessed is her husband and her marriage-bed.<\/p>\n

JOCASTA<\/h3>\n

My greetings to thee, stranger; thy fair words<\/p>\n

Deserve a like response. But tell me why<\/p>\n

Thou comest\u2014what thy need or what thy news.<\/p>\n

MESSENGER<\/h3>\n

Good for thy consort and the royal house.<\/p>\n

JOCASTA<\/h3>\n

What may it be? Whose messenger art thou?<\/p>\n

MESSENGER<\/h3>\n

The Isthmian commons have resolved to make<\/p>\n

Thy husband king\u2014so ’twas reported there.<\/p>\n

JOCASTA<\/h3>\n

What! is not aged Polybus still king?<\/p>\n

MESSENGER<\/h3>\n

No, verily; he’s dead and in his grave.<\/p>\n

JOCASTA<\/h3>\n

What! is he dead, the sire of Oedipus?<\/p>\n

MESSENGER<\/h3>\n

If I speak falsely, may I die myself.<\/p>\n

JOCASTA<\/h3>\n

Quick, maiden, bear these tidings to my lord.<\/p>\n

Ye god-sent oracles, where stand ye now!<\/p>\n

This is the man whom Oedipus long shunned,<\/p>\n

In dread to prove his murderer; and now<\/p>\n

He dies in nature’s course, not by his hand.<\/p>\n

[Enter OEDIPUS.]<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

My wife, my queen, Jocasta, why hast thou<\/p>\n

Summoned me from my palace?<\/p>\n

JOCASTA<\/h3>\n

Hear this man,<\/p>\n

And as thou hearest judge what has become<\/p>\n

Of all those awe-inspiring oracles.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Who is this man, and what his news for me?<\/p>\n

JOCASTA<\/h3>\n

He comes from Corinth and his message this:<\/p>\n

Thy father Polybus hath passed away.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

What? let me have it, stranger, from thy mouth.<\/p>\n

MESSENGER<\/h3>\n

If I must first make plain beyond a doubt<\/p>\n

My message, know that Polybus is dead.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

By treachery, or by sickness visited?<\/p>\n

MESSENGER<\/h3>\n

One touch will send an old man to his rest.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

So of some malady he died, poor man.<\/p>\n

MESSENGER<\/h3>\n

Yes, having measured the full span of years.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Out on it, lady! why should one regard<\/p>\n

The Pythian hearth or birds that scream i’ the air?<\/p>\n

Did they not point at me as doomed to slay<\/p>\n

My father? but he’s dead and in his grave<\/p>\n

And here am I who ne’er unsheathed a sword;<\/p>\n

Unless the longing for his absent son<\/p>\n

Killed him and so I<\/i> slew him in a sense.<\/p>\n

But, as they stand, the oracles are dead\u2014<\/p>\n

Dust, ashes, nothing, dead as Polybus.<\/p>\n

JOCASTA<\/h3>\n

Say, did not I foretell this long ago?<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Thou didst: but I was misled by my fear.<\/p>\n

JOCASTA<\/h3>\n

Then let I no more weigh upon thy soul.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Must I not fear my mother’s marriage bed.<\/p>\n

JOCASTA<\/h3>\n

Why should a mortal man, the sport of chance,<\/p>\n

With no assured foreknowledge, be afraid?<\/p>\n

Best live a careless life from hand to mouth.<\/p>\n

This wedlock with thy mother fear not thou.<\/p>\n

How oft it chances that in dreams a man<\/p>\n

Has wed his mother! He who least regards<\/p>\n

Such brainsick phantasies lives most at ease.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

I should have shared in full thy confidence,<\/p>\n

Were not my mother living; since she lives<\/p>\n

Though half convinced I still must live in dread.<\/p>\n

JOCASTA<\/h3>\n

And yet thy sire’s death lights out darkness much.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Much, but my fear is touching her who lives.<\/p>\n

MESSENGER<\/h3>\n

Who may this woman be whom thus you fear?<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Merope, stranger, wife of Polybus.<\/p>\n

MESSENGER<\/h3>\n

And what of her can cause you any fear?<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

A heaven-sent oracle of dread import.<\/p>\n

MESSENGER<\/h3>\n

A mystery, or may a stranger hear it?<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Aye, ’tis no secret. Loxias once foretold<\/p>\n

That I should mate with mine own mother, and shed<\/p>\n

With my own hands the blood of my own sire.<\/p>\n

Hence Corinth was for many a year to me<\/p>\n

A home distant; and I trove abroad,<\/p>\n

But missed the sweetest sight, my parents’ face.<\/p>\n

MESSENGER<\/h3>\n

Was this the fear that exiled thee from home?<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Yea, and the dread of slaying my own sire.<\/p>\n

MESSENGER<\/h3>\n

Why, since I came to give thee pleasure, King,<\/p>\n

Have I not rid thee of this second fear?<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Well, thou shalt have due guerdon for thy pains.<\/p>\n

MESSENGER<\/h3>\n

Well, I confess what chiefly made me come<\/p>\n

Was hope to profit by thy coming home.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Nay, I will ne’er go near my parents more.<\/p>\n

MESSENGER<\/h3>\n

My son, ’tis plain, thou know’st not what thou doest.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

How so, old man? For heaven’s sake tell me all.<\/p>\n

MESSENGER<\/h3>\n

If this is why thou dreadest to return.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Yea, lest the god’s word be fulfilled in me.<\/p>\n

MESSENGER<\/h3>\n

Lest through thy parents thou shouldst be accursed?<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

This and none other is my constant dread.<\/p>\n

MESSENGER<\/h3>\n

Dost thou not know thy fears are baseless all?<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

How baseless, if I am their very son?<\/p>\n

MESSENGER<\/h3>\n

Since Polybus was naught to thee in blood.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

What say’st thou? was not Polybus my sire?<\/p>\n

MESSENGER<\/h3>\n

As much thy sire as I am, and no more.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

My sire no more to me than one who is naught?<\/p>\n

MESSENGER<\/h3>\n

Since I begat thee not, no more did he.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

What reason had he then to call me son?<\/p>\n

MESSENGER<\/h3>\n

Know that he took thee from my hands, a gift.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Yet, if no child of his, he loved me well.<\/p>\n

MESSENGER<\/h3>\n

A childless man till then, he warmed to thee.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

A foundling or a purchased slave, this child?<\/p>\n

MESSENGER<\/h3>\n

I found thee in Cithaeron’s wooded glens.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

What led thee to explore those upland glades?<\/p>\n

MESSENGER<\/h3>\n

My business was to tend the mountain flocks.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

A vagrant shepherd journeying for hire?<\/p>\n

MESSENGER<\/h3>\n

True, but thy savior in that hour, my son.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

My savior? from what harm? what ailed me then?<\/p>\n

MESSENGER<\/h3>\n

Those ankle joints are evidence enow.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Ah, why remind me of that ancient sore?<\/p>\n

MESSENGER<\/h3>\n

I loosed the pin that riveted thy feet.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Yes, from my cradle that dread brand I bore.<\/p>\n

MESSENGER<\/h3>\n

Whence thou deriv’st the name that still is thine.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Who did it? I adjure thee, tell me who<\/p>\n

Say, was it father, mother?<\/p>\n

MESSENGER<\/h3>\n

I know not.<\/p>\n

The man from whom I had thee may know more.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

What, did another find me, not thyself?<\/p>\n

MESSENGER<\/h3>\n

Not I; another shepherd gave thee me.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Who was he? Would’st thou know again the man?<\/p>\n

MESSENGER<\/h3>\n

He passed indeed for one of Laius’ house.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

The king who ruled the country long ago?<\/p>\n

MESSENGER<\/h3>\n

The same: he was a herdsman of the king.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

And is he living still for me to see him?<\/p>\n

MESSENGER<\/h3>\n

His fellow-countrymen should best know that.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Doth any bystander among you know<\/p>\n

The herd he speaks of, or by seeing him<\/p>\n

Afield or in the city? answer straight!<\/p>\n

The hour hath come to clear this business up.<\/p>\n

CHORUS<\/h3>\n

Methinks he means none other than the hind<\/p>\n

Whom thou anon wert fain to see; but that<\/p>\n

Our queen Jocasta best of all could tell.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Madam, dost know the man we sent to fetch?<\/p>\n

Is the same of whom the stranger speaks?<\/p>\n

JOCASTA<\/h3>\n

Who is the man? What matter? Let it be.<\/p>\n

‘Twere waste of thought to weigh such idle words.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

No, with such guiding clues I cannot fail<\/p>\n

To bring to light the secret of my birth.<\/p>\n

JOCASTA<\/h3>\n

Oh, as thou carest for thy life, give o’er<\/p>\n

This quest. Enough the anguish I<\/i> endure.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Be of good cheer; though I be proved the son<\/p>\n

Of a bondwoman, aye, through three descents<\/p>\n

Triply a slave, thy honor is unsmirched.<\/p>\n

JOCASTA<\/h3>\n

Yet humor me, I pray thee; do not this.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

I cannot; I must probe this matter home.<\/p>\n

JOCASTA<\/h3>\n

‘Tis for thy sake I advise thee for the best.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

I grow impatient of this best advice.<\/p>\n

JOCASTA<\/h3>\n

Ah mayst thou ne’er discover who thou art!<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Go, fetch me here the herd, and leave yon woman<\/p>\n

To glory in her pride of ancestry.<\/p>\n

JOCASTA<\/h3>\n

O woe is thee, poor wretch! With that last word<\/p>\n

I leave thee, henceforth silent evermore.<\/p>\n

[Exit JOCASTA]<\/p>\n

CHORUS<\/h3>\n

Why, Oedipus, why stung with passionate grief<\/p>\n

Hath the queen thus departed? Much I fear<\/p>\n

From this dead calm will burst a storm of woes.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Let the storm burst, my fixed resolve still holds,<\/p>\n

To learn my lineage, be it ne’er so low.<\/p>\n

It may be she with all a woman’s pride<\/p>\n

Thinks scorn of my base parentage. But I<\/p>\n

Who rank myself as Fortune’s favorite child,<\/p>\n

The giver of good gifts, shall not be shamed.<\/p>\n

She is my mother and the changing moons<\/p>\n

My brethren, and with them I wax and wane.<\/p>\n

Thus sprung why should I fear to trace my birth?<\/p>\n

Nothing can make me other than I am.<\/p>\n

CHORUS<\/h3>\n

(Str.)<\/p>\n

If my soul prophetic err not, if my wisdom aught avail,<\/p>\n

Thee, Cithaeron, I shall hail,<\/p>\n

As the nurse and foster-mother of our Oedipus shall greet<\/p>\n

Ere tomorrow’s full moon rises, and exalt thee as is meet.<\/p>\n

Dance and song shall hymn thy praises, lover of our royal race.<\/p>\n

Phoebus, may my words find grace! (Ant.)<\/p>\n

Child, who bare thee, nymph or goddess? sure thy sure was more than<\/p>\n

man,<\/p>\n

Haply the hill-roamer Pan.<\/p>\n

Of did Loxias beget thee, for he haunts the upland wold;<\/p>\n

Or Cyllene’s lord, or Bacchus, dweller on the hilltops cold?<\/p>\n

Did some Heliconian Oread give him thee, a new-born joy?<\/p>\n

Nymphs with whom he love to toy?<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Elders, if I, who never yet before<\/p>\n

Have met the man, may make a guess, methinks<\/p>\n

I see the herdsman who we long have sought;<\/p>\n

His time-worn aspect matches with the years<\/p>\n

Of yonder aged messenger; besides<\/p>\n

I seem to recognize the men who bring him<\/p>\n

As servants of my own. But you, perchance,<\/p>\n

Having in past days known or seen the herd,<\/p>\n

May better by sure knowledge my surmise.<\/p>\n

CHORUS<\/h3>\n

I recognize him; one of Laius’ house;<\/p>\n

A simple hind, but true as any man.<\/p>\n

[Enter HERDSMAN.]<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Corinthian, stranger, I address thee first,<\/p>\n

Is this the man thou meanest!<\/p>\n

MESSENGER<\/h3>\n

This is he.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

And now old man, look up and answer all<\/p>\n

I ask thee. Wast thou once of Laius’ house?<\/p>\n

HERDSMAN<\/h3>\n

I was, a thrall, not purchased but home-bred.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

What was thy business? how wast thou employed?<\/p>\n

HERDSMAN<\/h3>\n

The best part of my life I tended sheep.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

What were the pastures thou didst most frequent?<\/p>\n

HERDSMAN<\/h3>\n

Cithaeron and the neighboring alps.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Then there<\/p>\n

Thou must have known yon man, at least by fame?<\/p>\n

HERDSMAN<\/h3>\n

Yon man? in what way? what man dost thou mean?<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

The man here, having met him in past times…<\/p>\n

HERDSMAN<\/h3>\n

Off-hand I cannot call him well to mind.<\/p>\n

MESSENGER<\/h3>\n

No wonder, master. But I will revive<\/p>\n

His blunted memories. Sure he can recall<\/p>\n

What time together both we drove our flocks,<\/p>\n

He two, I one, on the Cithaeron range,<\/p>\n

For three long summers; I his mate from spring<\/p>\n

Till rose Arcturus; then in winter time<\/p>\n

I led mine home, he his to Laius’ folds.<\/p>\n

Did these things happen as I say, or no?<\/p>\n

HERDSMAN<\/h3>\n

‘Tis long ago, but all thou say’st is true.<\/p>\n

MESSENGER<\/h3>\n

Well, thou mast then remember giving me<\/p>\n

A child to rear as my own foster-son?<\/p>\n

HERDSMAN<\/h3>\n

Why dost thou ask this question? What of that?<\/p>\n

MESSENGER<\/h3>\n

Friend, he that stands before thee was that child.<\/p>\n

HERDSMAN<\/h3>\n

A plague upon thee! Hold thy wanton tongue!<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Softly, old man, rebuke him not; thy words<\/p>\n

Are more deserving chastisement than his.<\/p>\n

HERDSMAN<\/h3>\n

O best of masters, what is my offense?<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Not answering what he asks about the child.<\/p>\n

HERDSMAN<\/h3>\n

He speaks at random, babbles like a fool.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

If thou lack’st grace to speak, I’ll loose thy tongue.<\/p>\n

HERDSMAN<\/h3>\n

For mercy’s sake abuse not an old man.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Arrest the villain, seize and pinion him!<\/p>\n

HERDSMAN<\/h3>\n

Alack, alack!<\/p>\n

What have I done? what wouldst thou further learn?<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Didst give this man the child of whom he asks?<\/p>\n

HERDSMAN<\/h3>\n

I did; and would that I had died that day!<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

And die thou shalt unless thou tell the truth.<\/p>\n

HERDSMAN<\/h3>\n

But, if I tell it, I am doubly lost.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

The knave methinks will still prevaricate.<\/p>\n

HERDSMAN<\/h3>\n

Nay, I confessed I gave it long ago.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Whence came it? was it thine, or given to thee?<\/p>\n

HERDSMAN<\/h3>\n

I had it from another, ’twas not mine.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

From whom of these our townsmen, and what house?<\/p>\n

HERDSMAN<\/h3>\n

Forbear for God’s sake, master, ask no more.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

If I must question thee again, thou’rt lost.<\/p>\n

HERDSMAN<\/h3>\n

Well then\u2014it was a child of Laius’ house.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Slave-born or one of Laius’ own race?<\/p>\n

HERDSMAN<\/h3>\n

Ah me!<\/p>\n

I stand upon the perilous edge of speech.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

And I of hearing, but I still must hear.<\/p>\n

HERDSMAN<\/h3>\n

Know then the child was by repute his own,<\/p>\n

But she within, thy consort best could tell.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

What! she, she gave it thee?<\/p>\n

HERDSMAN<\/h3>\n

‘Tis so, my king.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

With what intent?<\/p>\n

HERDSMAN<\/h3>\n

To make away with it.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

What, she its mother.<\/p>\n

HERDSMAN<\/h3>\n

Fearing a dread weird.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

What weird?<\/p>\n

HERDSMAN<\/h3>\n

‘Twas told that he should slay his sire.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

What didst thou give it then to this old man?<\/p>\n

HERDSMAN<\/h3>\n

Through pity, master, for the babe. I thought<\/p>\n

He’d take it to the country whence he came;<\/p>\n

But he preserved it for the worst of woes.<\/p>\n

For if thou art in sooth what this man saith,<\/p>\n

God pity thee! thou wast to misery born.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Ah me! ah me! all brought to pass, all true!<\/p>\n

O light, may I behold thee nevermore!<\/p>\n

I stand a wretch, in birth, in wedlock cursed,<\/p>\n

A parricide, incestuously, triply cursed!<\/p>\n

[Exit OEDIPUS]<\/p>\n

CHORUS<\/h3>\n

(Str. 1) Races of mortal man Whose life is but a span,<\/p>\n

I count ye but the shadow of a shade!<\/p>\n

For he who most doth know Of bliss, hath but the show;<\/p>\n

A moment, and the visions pale and fade.<\/p>\n

Thy fall, O Oedipus, thy piteous fall<\/p>\n

Warns me none born of women blest to call.<\/p>\n

(Ant. 1) For he of marksmen best, O Zeus, outshot the rest,<\/p>\n

And won the prize supreme of wealth and power.<\/p>\n

By him the vulture maid Was quelled, her witchery laid;<\/p>\n

He rose our savior and the land’s strong tower.<\/p>\n

We hailed thee king and from that day adored<\/p>\n

Of mighty Thebes the universal lord.<\/p>\n

(Str. 2) O heavy hand of fate! Who now more desolate,<\/p>\n

Whose tale more sad than thine, whose lot more dire?<\/p>\n

O Oedipus, discrowned head, Thy cradle was thy marriage bed;<\/p>\n

One harborage sufficed for son and sire.<\/p>\n

How could the soil thy father eared so long<\/p>\n

Endure to bear in silence such a wrong?<\/p>\n

(Ant. 2) All-seeing Time hath caught Guilt, and to justice brought<\/p>\n

The son and sire commingled in one bed.<\/p>\n

O child of Laius’ ill-starred race Would I had ne’er beheld thy face;<\/p>\n

I raise for thee a dirge as o’er the dead.<\/p>\n

Yet, sooth to say, through thee I drew new breath,<\/p>\n

And now through thee I feel a second death.<\/p>\n

[Enter SECOND MESSENGER.]<\/p>\n

SECOND MESSENGER<\/h3>\n

Most grave and reverend senators of Thebes,<\/p>\n

What Deeds ye soon must hear, what sights behold<\/p>\n

How will ye mourn, if, true-born patriots,<\/p>\n

Ye reverence still the race of Labdacus!<\/p>\n

Not Ister nor all Phasis’ flood, I ween,<\/p>\n

Could wash away the blood-stains from this house,<\/p>\n

The ills it shrouds or soon will bring to light,<\/p>\n

Ills wrought of malice, not unwittingly.<\/p>\n

The worst to bear are self-inflicted wounds.<\/p>\n

CHORUS<\/h3>\n

Grievous enough for all our tears and groans<\/p>\n

Our past calamities; what canst thou add?<\/p>\n

SECOND MESSENGER<\/h3>\n

My tale is quickly told and quickly heard.<\/p>\n

Our sovereign lady queen Jocasta’s dead.<\/p>\n

CHORUS<\/h3>\n

Alas, poor queen! how came she by her death?<\/p>\n

SECOND MESSENGER<\/h3>\n

By her own hand. And all the horror of it,<\/p>\n

Not having seen, yet cannot comprehend.<\/p>\n

Nathless, as far as my poor memory serves,<\/p>\n

I will relate the unhappy lady’s woe.<\/p>\n

When in her frenzy she had passed inside<\/p>\n

The vestibule, she hurried straight to win<\/p>\n

The bridal-chamber, clutching at her hair<\/p>\n

With both her hands, and, once within the room,<\/p>\n

She shut the doors behind her with a crash.<\/p>\n

“Laius,” she cried, and called her husband dead<\/p>\n

Long, long ago; her thought was of that child<\/p>\n

By him begot, the son by whom the sire<\/p>\n

Was murdered and the mother left to breed<\/p>\n

With her own seed, a monstrous progeny.<\/p>\n

Then she bewailed the marriage bed whereon<\/p>\n

Poor wretch, she had conceived a double brood,<\/p>\n

Husband by husband, children by her child.<\/p>\n

What happened after that I cannot tell,<\/p>\n

Nor how the end befell, for with a shriek<\/p>\n

Burst on us Oedipus; all eyes were fixed<\/p>\n

On Oedipus, as up and down he strode,<\/p>\n

Nor could we mark her agony to the end.<\/p>\n

For stalking to and fro “A sword!” he cried,<\/p>\n

“Where is the wife, no wife, the teeming womb<\/p>\n

That bore a double harvest, me and mine?”<\/p>\n

And in his frenzy some supernal power<\/p>\n

(No mortal, surely, none of us who watched him)<\/p>\n

Guided his footsteps; with a terrible shriek,<\/p>\n

As though one beckoned him, he crashed against<\/p>\n

The folding doors, and from their staples forced<\/p>\n

The wrenched bolts and hurled himself within.<\/p>\n

Then we beheld the woman hanging there,<\/p>\n

A running noose entwined about her neck.<\/p>\n

But when he saw her, with a maddened roar<\/p>\n

He loosed the cord; and when her wretched corpse<\/p>\n

Lay stretched on earth, what followed\u2014O ’twas dread!<\/p>\n

He tore the golden brooches that upheld<\/p>\n

Her queenly robes, upraised them high and smote<\/p>\n

Full on his eye-balls, uttering words like these:<\/p>\n

“No more shall ye behold such sights of woe,<\/p>\n

Deeds I have suffered and myself have wrought;<\/p>\n

Henceforward quenched in darkness shall ye see<\/p>\n

Those ye should ne’er have seen; now blind to those<\/p>\n

Whom, when I saw, I vainly yearned to know.”<\/p>\n

Such was the burden of his moan, whereto,<\/p>\n

Not once but oft, he struck with his hand uplift<\/p>\n

His eyes, and at each stroke the ensanguined orbs<\/p>\n

Bedewed his beard, not oozing drop by drop,<\/p>\n

But one black gory downpour, thick as hail.<\/p>\n

Such evils, issuing from the double source,<\/p>\n

Have whelmed them both, confounding man and wife.<\/p>\n

Till now the storied fortune of this house<\/p>\n

Was fortunate indeed; but from this day<\/p>\n

Woe, lamentation, ruin, death, disgrace,<\/p>\n

All ills that can be named, all, all are theirs.<\/p>\n

CHORUS<\/h3>\n

But hath he still no respite from his pain?<\/p>\n

SECOND MESSENGER<\/h3>\n

He cries, “Unbar the doors and let all Thebes<\/p>\n

Behold the slayer of his sire, his mother’s\u2014”<\/p>\n

That shameful word my lips may not repeat.<\/p>\n

He vows to fly self-banished from the land,<\/p>\n

Nor stay to bring upon his house the curse<\/p>\n

Himself had uttered; but he has no strength<\/p>\n

Nor one to guide him, and his torture’s more<\/p>\n

Than man can suffer, as yourselves will see.<\/p>\n

For lo, the palace portals are unbarred,<\/p>\n

And soon ye shall behold a sight so sad<\/p>\n

That he who must abhorred would pity it.<\/p>\n

[Enter OEDIPUS blinded.]<\/p>\n

CHORUS<\/h3>\n

Woeful sight! more woeful none These sad eyes have looked upon. Whence this madness? None can tell Who did cast on thee his spell, prowling all thy life around, Leaping with a demon bound. Hapless wretch! how can I brook On thy misery to look? Though to gaze on thee I yearn, Much to question, much to learn, Horror-struck away I turn.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Ah me! ah woe is me!<\/p>\n

Ah whither am I borne!<\/p>\n

How like a ghost forlorn<\/p>\n

My voice flits from me on the air!<\/p>\n

On, on the demon goads. The end, ah where?<\/p>\n

CHORUS<\/h3>\n

An end too dread to tell, too dark to see.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

(Str. 1)<\/p>\n

Dark, dark! The horror of darkness, like a shroud,<\/p>\n

Wraps me and bears me on through mist and cloud.<\/p>\n

Ah me, ah me! What spasms athwart me shoot,<\/p>\n

What pangs of agonizing memory?<\/p>\n

CHORUS<\/h3>\n

No marvel if in such a plight thou feel’st<\/p>\n

The double weight of past and present woes.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

(Ant. 1)<\/p>\n

Ah friend, still loyal, constant still and kind,<\/p>\n

Thou carest for the blind.<\/p>\n

I know thee near, and though bereft of eyes,<\/p>\n

Thy voice I recognize.<\/p>\n

CHORUS<\/h3>\n

O doer of dread deeds, how couldst thou mar<\/p>\n

Thy vision thus? What demon goaded thee?<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

(Str. 2)<\/p>\n

Apollo, friend, Apollo, he it was<\/p>\n

That brought these ills to pass;<\/p>\n

But the right hand that dealt the blow<\/p>\n

Was mine, none other. How,<\/p>\n

How, could I longer see when sight<\/p>\n

Brought no delight?<\/p>\n

CHORUS<\/h3>\n

Alas! ’tis as thou sayest.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Say, friends, can any look or voice<\/p>\n

Or touch of love henceforth my heart rejoice?<\/p>\n

Haste, friends, no fond delay, Take the twice cursed away Far from all ken,<\/p>\n

The man abhorred of gods, accursed of men.<\/p>\n

CHORUS<\/h3>\n

O thy despair well suits thy desperate case.<\/p>\n

Would I had never looked upon thy face!<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

(Ant. 2)<\/p>\n

My curse on him whoe’er unrived<\/p>\n

The waif’s fell fetters and my life revived!<\/p>\n

He meant me well, yet had he left me there,<\/p>\n

He had saved my friends and me a world of care.<\/p>\n

CHORUS<\/h3>\n

I too had wished it so.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Then had I never come to shed<\/p>\n

My father’s blood nor climbed my mother’s bed;<\/p>\n

The monstrous offspring of a womb defiled,<\/p>\n

Co-mate of him who gendered me, and child.<\/p>\n

Was ever man before afflicted thus,<\/p>\n

Like Oedipus.<\/p>\n

CHORUS<\/h3>\n

I cannot say that thou hast counseled well,<\/p>\n

For thou wert better dead than living blind.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

What’s done was well done. Thou canst never shake<\/p>\n

My firm belief. A truce to argument.<\/p>\n

For, had I sight, I know not with what eyes<\/p>\n

I could have met my father in the shades,<\/p>\n

Or my poor mother, since against the twain<\/p>\n

I sinned, a sin no gallows could atone.<\/p>\n

Aye, but, ye say, the sight of children joys<\/p>\n

A parent’s eyes. What, born as mine were born?<\/p>\n

No, such a sight could never bring me joy;<\/p>\n

Nor this fair city with its battlements,<\/p>\n

Its temples and the statues of its gods,<\/p>\n

Sights from which I, now wretchedst of all,<\/p>\n

Once ranked the foremost Theban in all Thebes,<\/p>\n

By my own sentence am cut off, condemned<\/p>\n

By my own proclamation ‘gainst the wretch,<\/p>\n

The miscreant by heaven itself declared<\/p>\n

Unclean\u2014and of the race of Laius.<\/p>\n

Thus branded as a felon by myself,<\/p>\n

How had I dared to look you in the face?<\/p>\n

Nay, had I known a way to choke the springs<\/p>\n

Of hearing, I had never shrunk to make<\/p>\n

A dungeon of this miserable frame,<\/p>\n

Cut off from sight and hearing; for ’tis bliss<\/p>\n

to bide in regions sorrow cannot reach.<\/p>\n

Why didst thou harbor me, Cithaeron, why<\/p>\n

Didst thou not take and slay me? Then I never<\/p>\n

Had shown to men the secret of my birth.<\/p>\n

O Polybus, O Corinth, O my home,<\/p>\n

Home of my ancestors (so wast thou called)<\/p>\n

How fair a nursling then I seemed, how foul<\/p>\n

The canker that lay festering in the bud!<\/p>\n

Now is the blight revealed of root and fruit.<\/p>\n

Ye triple high-roads, and thou hidden glen,<\/p>\n

Coppice, and pass where meet the three-branched ways,<\/p>\n

Ye drank my blood, the life-blood these hands spilt,<\/p>\n

My father’s; do ye call to mind perchance<\/p>\n

Those deeds of mine ye witnessed and the work<\/p>\n

I wrought thereafter when I came to Thebes?<\/p>\n

O fatal wedlock, thou didst give me birth,<\/p>\n

And, having borne me, sowed again my seed,<\/p>\n

Mingling the blood of fathers, brothers, children,<\/p>\n

Brides, wives and mothers, an incestuous brood,<\/p>\n

All horrors that are wrought beneath the sun,<\/p>\n

Horrors so foul to name them were unmeet.<\/p>\n

O, I adjure you, hide me anywhere<\/p>\n

Far from this land, or slay me straight, or cast me<\/p>\n

Down to the depths of ocean out of sight.<\/p>\n

Come hither, deign to touch an abject wretch;<\/p>\n

Draw near and fear not; I myself must bear<\/p>\n

The load of guilt that none but I can share.<\/p>\n

[Enter CREON.]<\/p>\n

CREON<\/h3>\n

Lo, here is Creon, the one man to grant<\/p>\n

Thy prayer by action or advice, for he<\/p>\n

Is left the State’s sole guardian in thy stead.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Ah me! what words to accost him can I find?<\/p>\n

What cause has he to trust me? In the past<\/p>\n

I have bee proved his rancorous enemy.<\/p>\n

CREON<\/h3>\n

Not in derision, Oedipus, I come<\/p>\n

Nor to upbraid thee with thy past misdeeds.<\/p>\n

(To BYSTANDERS)<\/p>\n

But shame upon you! if ye feel no sense<\/p>\n

Of human decencies, at least revere<\/p>\n

The Sun whose light beholds and nurtures all.<\/p>\n

Leave not thus nakedly for all to gaze at<\/p>\n

A horror neither earth nor rain from heaven<\/p>\n

Nor light will suffer. Lead him straight within,<\/p>\n

For it is seemly that a kinsman’s woes<\/p>\n

Be heard by kin and seen by kin alone.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

O listen, since thy presence comes to me<\/p>\n

A shock of glad surprise\u2014so noble thou,<\/p>\n

And I so vile\u2014O grant me one small boon.<\/p>\n

I ask it not on my behalf, but thine.<\/p>\n

CREON<\/h3>\n

And what the favor thou wouldst crave of me?<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Forth from thy borders thrust me with all speed;<\/p>\n

Set me within some vasty desert where<\/p>\n

No mortal voice shall greet me any more.<\/p>\n

CREON<\/h3>\n

This had I done already, but I deemed<\/p>\n

It first behooved me to consult the god.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

His will was set forth fully\u2014to destroy<\/p>\n

The parricide, the scoundrel; and I am he.<\/p>\n

CREON<\/h3>\n

Yea, so he spake, but in our present plight<\/p>\n

‘Twere better to consult the god anew.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Dare ye inquire concerning such a wretch?<\/p>\n

CREON<\/h3>\n

Yea, for thyself wouldst credit now his word.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Aye, and on thee in all humility<\/p>\n

I lay this charge: let her who lies within<\/p>\n

Receive such burial as thou shalt ordain;<\/p>\n

Such rites ’tis thine, as brother, to perform.<\/p>\n

But for myself, O never let my Thebes,<\/p>\n

The city of my sires, be doomed to bear<\/p>\n

The burden of my presence while I live.<\/p>\n

No, let me be a dweller on the hills,<\/p>\n

On yonder mount Cithaeron, famed as mine,<\/p>\n

My tomb predestined for me by my sire<\/p>\n

And mother, while they lived, that I may die<\/p>\n

Slain as they sought to slay me, when alive.<\/p>\n

This much I know full surely, nor disease<\/p>\n

Shall end my days, nor any common chance;<\/p>\n

For I had ne’er been snatched from death, unless<\/p>\n

I was predestined to some awful doom.<\/p>\n

So be it. I reck not how Fate deals with me<\/p>\n

But my unhappy children\u2014for my sons<\/p>\n

Be not concerned, O Creon, they are men,<\/p>\n

And for themselves, where’er they be, can fend.<\/p>\n

But for my daughters twain, poor innocent maids,<\/p>\n

Who ever sat beside me at the board<\/p>\n

Sharing my viands, drinking of my cup,<\/p>\n

For them, I pray thee, care, and, if thou willst,<\/p>\n

O might I feel their touch and make my moan.<\/p>\n

Hear me, O prince, my noble-hearted prince!<\/p>\n

Could I but blindly touch them with my hands<\/p>\n

I’d think they still were mine, as when I saw.<\/p>\n

[ANTIGONE and ISMENE are led in.]<\/p>\n

What say I? can it be my pretty ones<\/p>\n

Whose sobs I hear? Has Creon pitied me<\/p>\n

And sent me my two darlings? Can this be?<\/p>\n

CREON<\/h3>\n

‘Tis true; ’twas I procured thee this delight,<\/p>\n

Knowing the joy they were to thee of old.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

God speed thee! and as meed for bringing them<\/p>\n

May Providence deal with thee kindlier<\/p>\n

Than it has dealt with me! O children mine,<\/p>\n

Where are ye? Let me clasp you with these hands,<\/p>\n

A brother’s hands, a father’s; hands that made<\/p>\n

Lack-luster sockets of his once bright eyes;<\/p>\n

Hands of a man who blindly, recklessly,<\/p>\n

Became your sire by her from whom he sprang.<\/p>\n

Though I cannot behold you, I must weep<\/p>\n

In thinking of the evil days to come,<\/p>\n

The slights and wrongs that men will put upon you.<\/p>\n

Where’er ye go to feast or festival,<\/p>\n

No merrymaking will it prove for you,<\/p>\n

But oft abashed in tears ye will return.<\/p>\n

And when ye come to marriageable years,<\/p>\n

Where’s the bold wooers who will jeopardize<\/p>\n

To take unto himself such disrepute<\/p>\n

As to my children’s children still must cling,<\/p>\n

For what of infamy is lacking here?<\/p>\n

“Their father slew his father, sowed the seed<\/p>\n

Where he himself was gendered, and begat<\/p>\n

These maidens at the source wherefrom he sprang.”<\/p>\n

Such are the gibes that men will cast at you.<\/p>\n

Who then will wed you? None, I ween, but ye<\/p>\n

Must pine, poor maids, in single barrenness.<\/p>\n

O Prince, Menoeceus’ son, to thee, I turn,<\/p>\n

With the it rests to father them, for we<\/p>\n

Their natural parents, both of us, are lost.<\/p>\n

O leave them not to wander poor, unwed,<\/p>\n

Thy kin, nor let them share my low estate.<\/p>\n

O pity them so young, and but for thee<\/p>\n

All destitute. Thy hand upon it, Prince.<\/p>\n

To you, my children I had much to say,<\/p>\n

Were ye but ripe to hear. Let this suffice:<\/p>\n

Pray ye may find some home and live content,<\/p>\n

And may your lot prove happier than your sire’s.<\/p>\n

CREON<\/h3>\n

Thou hast had enough of weeping; pass within.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

I must obey,<\/p>\n

Though ’tis grievous.<\/p>\n

CREON<\/h3>\n

Weep not, everything must have its day.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Well I go, but on conditions.<\/p>\n

CREON<\/h3>\n

What thy terms for going, say.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Send me from the land an exile.<\/p>\n

CREON<\/h3>\n

Ask this of the gods, not me.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

But I am the gods’ abhorrence.<\/p>\n

CREON<\/h3>\n

Then they soon will grant thy plea.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Lead me hence, then, I am willing.<\/p>\n

CREON<\/h3>\n

Come, but let thy children go.<\/p>\n

OEDIPUS<\/h3>\n

Rob me not of these my children!<\/p>\n

CREON<\/h3>\n

Crave not mastery in all,<\/p>\n

For the mastery that raised thee was thy bane and wrought thy fall.<\/p>\n

CHORUS<\/h3>\n

Look ye, countrymen and Thebans, this is Oedipus the great,<\/p>\n

He who knew the Sphinx’s riddle and was mightiest in our state.<\/p>\n

Who of all our townsmen gazed not on his fame with envious eyes?<\/p>\n

Now, in what a sea of troubles sunk and overwhelmed he lies!<\/p>\n

Therefore wait to see life’s ending ere thou count one mortal blest;<\/p>\n

Wait till free from pain and sorrow he has gained his final rest.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t

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Candela Citations<\/h3>\n\t\t\t\t\t
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Public domain content<\/div>