Part 16

CHORUS. 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.

OEDIPUS. Ah me! ah woe is me! Ah whither am I borne! How like a ghost forlorn My voice flits from me on the air! On, on the demon goads. The end, ah where?

CHORUS. An end too dread to tell, too dark to see.

OEDIPUS. (Str. 1) Dark, dark! The horror of darkness, like a shroud, Wraps me and bears me on through mist and cloud. Ah me, ah me! What spasms athwart me shoot, What pangs of agonizing memory?

CHORUS. No marvel if in such a plight thou feel’st The double weight of past and present woes.

OEDIPUS. (Ant. 1) Ah friend, still loyal, constant still and kind, Thou carest for the blind. I know thee near, and though bereft of eyes, Thy voice I recognize.

CHORUS. O doer of dread deeds, how couldst thou mar Thy vision thus? What demon goaded thee?

OEDIPUS. (Str. 2) Apollo, friend, Apollo, he it was That brought these ills to pass; But the right hand that dealt the blow Was mine, none other. How, How, could I longer see when sight Brought no delight?

CHORUS. Alas! ’tis as thou sayest.

OEDIPUS. Say, friends, can any look or voice Or touch of love henceforth my heart rejoice? Haste, friends, no fond delay, Take the twice cursed away Far from all ken, The man abhorred of gods, accursed of men.

CHORUS. O thy despair well suits thy desperate case. Would I had never looked upon thy face!

OEDIPUS. (Ant. 2) My curse on him whoe’er unrived The waif’s fell fetters and my life revived! He meant me well, yet had he left me there, He had saved my friends and me a world of care.

CHORUS. I too had wished it so.

OEDIPUS. Then had I never come to shed My father’s blood nor climbed my mother’s bed; The monstrous offspring of a womb defiled, Co-mate of him who gendered me, and child. Was ever man before afflicted thus, Like Oedipus.

CHORUS. I cannot say that thou hast counseled well, For thou wert better dead than living blind.

OEDIPUS. What’s done was well done. Thou canst never shake My firm belief. A truce to argument. For, had I sight, I know not with what eyes I could have met my father in the shades, Or my poor mother, since against the twain I sinned, a sin no gallows could atone. Aye, but, ye say, the sight of children joys A parent’s eyes. What, born as mine were born? No, such a sight could never bring me joy; Nor this fair city with its battlements, Its temples and the statues of its gods, Sights from which I, now wretchedst of all, Once ranked the foremost Theban in all Thebes, By my own sentence am cut off, condemned By my own proclamation ’gainst the wretch, The miscreant by heaven itself declared Unclean—and of the race of Laius. Thus branded as a felon by myself, How had I dared to look you in the face? Nay, had I known a way to choke the springs Of hearing, I had never shrunk to make A dungeon of this miserable frame, Cut off from sight and hearing; for ’tis bliss to bide in regions sorrow cannot reach. Why didst thou harbor me, Cithaeron, why Didst thou not take and slay me? Then I never Had shown to men the secret of my birth. O Polybus, O Corinth, O my home, Home of my ancestors (so wast thou called) How fair a nursling then I seemed, how foul The canker that lay festering in the bud! Now is the blight revealed of root and fruit. Ye triple high-roads, and thou hidden glen, Coppice, and pass where meet the three-branched ways, Ye drank my blood, the life-blood these hands spilt, My father’s; do ye call to mind perchance Those deeds of mine ye witnessed and the work I wrought thereafter when I came to Thebes? O fatal wedlock, thou didst give me birth, And, having borne me, sowed again my seed, Mingling the blood of fathers, brothers, children, Brides, wives and mothers, an incestuous brood, All horrors that are wrought beneath the sun, Horrors so foul to name them were unmeet. O, I adjure you, hide me anywhere Far from this land, or slay me straight, or cast me Down to the depths of ocean out of sight. Come hither, deign to touch an abject wretch; Draw near and fear not; I myself must bear The load of guilt that none but I can share. [Enter CREON.]

CREON. Lo, here is Creon, the one man to grant Thy prayer by action or advice, for he Is left the State’s sole guardian in thy stead.

OEDIPUS. Ah me! what words to accost him can I find? What cause has he to trust me? In the past I have bee proved his rancorous enemy.

CREON. Not in derision, Oedipus, I come Nor to upbraid thee with thy past misdeeds. (To BYSTANDERS) But shame upon you! if ye feel no sense Of human decencies, at least revere The Sun whose light beholds and nurtures all. Leave not thus nakedly for all to gaze at A horror neither earth nor rain from heaven Nor light will suffer. Lead him straight within, For it is seemly that a kinsman’s woes Be heard by kin and seen by kin alone.

OEDIPUS. O listen, since thy presence comes to me A shock of glad surprise—so noble thou, And I so vile—O grant me one small boon. I ask it not on my behalf, but thine.

CREON. And what the favor thou wouldst crave of me?

OEDIPUS. Forth from thy borders thrust me with all speed; Set me within some vasty desert where No mortal voice shall greet me any more.

CREON. This had I done already, but I deemed It first behooved me to consult the god.

OEDIPUS. His will was set forth fully—to destroy The parricide, the scoundrel; and I am he.

CREON. Yea, so he spake, but in our present plight ’Twere better to consult the god anew.

OEDIPUS. Dare ye inquire concerning such a wretch?

CREON. Yea, for thyself wouldst credit now his word.

OEDIPUS. Aye, and on thee in all humility I lay this charge: let her who lies within Receive such burial as thou shalt ordain; Such rites ’tis thine, as brother, to perform. But for myself, O never let my Thebes, The city of my sires, be doomed to bear The burden of my presence while I live. No, let me be a dweller on the hills, On yonder mount Cithaeron, famed as mine, My tomb predestined for me by my sire And mother, while they lived, that I may die Slain as they sought to slay me, when alive. This much I know full surely, nor disease Shall end my days, nor any common chance; For I had ne’er been snatched from death, unless I was predestined to some awful doom. So be it. I reck not how Fate deals with me But my unhappy children—for my sons Be not concerned, O Creon, they are men, And for themselves, where’er they be, can fend. But for my daughters twain, poor innocent maids, Who ever sat beside me at the board Sharing my viands, drinking of my cup, For them, I pray thee, care, and, if thou willst, O might I feel their touch and make my moan. Hear me, O prince, my noble-hearted prince! Could I but blindly touch them with my hands I’d think they still were mine, as when I saw. [ANTIGONE and ISMENE are led in.] What say I? can it be my pretty ones Whose sobs I hear? Has Creon pitied me And sent me my two darlings? Can this be?