Chorus: Not thou the cause of these our ills;
And not on thy account hath fate
Attacked the house of Labdacus;710
But 'tis the ancient wrath of heaven
That still pursues our race.
Castalia's grove once lent its shade
Unto the Tyrian wanderer,
And Dirce gave her cooling waves,
What time the great Agenor's son,715
O'er all the earth the stolen prey
Of Jove pursuing, worn and spent,
Within these forests knelt him down
And adored the heavenly ravisher.
Then by Apollo's bidding led,
A wandering heifer following,720
Upon whose neck the dragging plow,
Nor the plodding wagon's curving yoke
Had never rested, he his quest
At last gave over, and his race
From that ill-omened heifer named.
From that time forth, the land of Thebes
Strange monsters hath engendered: first,725
That serpent, sprung from the valley's depths,
Hissing, o'ertopped the agéd oaks
And lofty pines; and higher still,
Above Chaonia's woods, he reared
His gleaming head, though on the ground730
His body lay in many coils.
And next the teeming earth produced
An impious brood of arméd men.
The battle call resounded loud
From the curving horn, and the piercing notes
Of the brazen trumpet shrill were heard.
Their new-created, nimble tongues,735
And voices strange, they first employ
In hostile clamor; and the fields,
The plains, their kindred soil, they fill.
This monster brood, consorting well
With that dire seed from which they sprung,
Their life within a day's brief span740
Enjoyed; for after Phoebus rose
They had their birth, but ere he set
They perished. At the dreadful sight
Great terror seized the wanderer;
And much he feared to face in war
His new-born foes. Until, at length
The savage youth in mutual strife745
Fell down, and mother earth
Beheld her sons, but now produced,
Returned again to her embrace.
And Oh, that with their fall might end
All impious strife within the state!
May Thebes, the land of Hercules,
Such fratricidal strife behold
No more!750
Why sing Actaeon's fate,
Whose brow the new-sprung antlers crowned
Of the long-lived stag, and whom his hounds,
Though their hapless master still, pursued?
In headlong haste through the mountains and woods,
He flees in fear, and with nimble feet755
He scours the glades and rocky passes,
In fear of the wind-tossed feathers hung
Among the trees; but most he shuns
The snares which he himself has set;
Until at last in the still, smooth pool760
He sees his horns and his features wild,
The pool where the goddess, too sternly chaste,
Had bathed her virgin limbs.
Old Man [to Oedipus]: The state of Corinth calls thee to the throne,
For Polybus has gained his lasting rest.785
Oedipus: See how a heartless fate doth compass me!
But tell me how my father met his end.
Old Man: In gentle sleep he breathed his life away.
Oedipus: My sire is dead, and not by violence!
I call the gods to witness that to heaven
I now in piety may lift my hands,790
And fear no stain of impious slaughter more.
And yet a still more fearful fate remains.
Old Man: Thy father's kingdom will dispel thy fears.
Oedipus: My father's kingdom would I seek, but still
I fear my mother.
Old Man: Fear'st thou her who waits.795
With anxious heart, imploring thy return?
Oedipus: 'Tis piety itself that bids me flee.
Old Man: And wouldst thou leave her in her widowhood?
Oedipus: Thou speak'st the very essence of my fears.
Old Man: Speak out the fear that doth oppress thy soul;
For 'tis my wont in trusty confidence
To counsel kings.
Oedipus: By Phoebus' word forewarned,800
From wedlock with my mother do I flee.
Old Man: Then cease thy empty fears, and lay aside
Thy base forebodings; for I tell thee here
That thou art not the son of Merope.
Oedipus: Why did she wish to rear a spurious son?
Old Man: Because the proud security of kings
Is by a son established.
Oedipus: Tell me now.805
How thou dost know the secrets of the court.
Old Man: With my own hands I gave thee to the king.
Oedipus: Thou gavest me? But who gave me to thee?
Old Man: A shepherd on Cithaeron's snowy slopes.
Oedipus: How camest thou within that sacred wood?
Old Man: My sheep upon that mountain did I seek.810
Oedipus: Now on my body name some well-known mark.
Old Man: Behold, thy feet in infancy were pierced,
And from thy swollen ankles art thou named.
Oedipus: Who was the man who gave me as a gift
Into thy hands?
Old Man: He fed the royal flocks,815
And under him the hireling shepherds served.
Oedipus: But tell his name.
Old Man: An old man's memory
Grows faint and weakly falters with disuse.
Oedipus: But wouldst thou know the features of the man?
Old Man: I might recall him, for a slender clue820
Ofttimes awakens memory of things
Oedipus: Then hasten, slaves,
Let all the master-shepherds drive their flocks
Before the altar here, yea, summon all
On whom depends the guidance of the flocks.
Old Man: Or chance or providence has kept thy fate825
In darkness hid. What long hath lain concealed,
I bid thee suffer to remain in doubt.
For often truth, when brought into the light,
Becomes the bane of him who seeks for her.
Oedipus: Can any ills be worse than those I fear?
Old Man: Oh, be thou sure the truth is big with fate,
Whose meaning must be sought with toil and pain.
The public weal calls there, and here thine own,830
And both with equal voice. Direct thy steps
Along a middle course! provoke not fate;
Permit thy fortune to unfold itself.
It profits naught to change a happy state.
Oedipus: A change is well when all is at the worst.
Old Man: What better canst thou ask than royal birth?835
No further seek, lest thou thy sire repent.
Oedipus: Though I should prove to be of shameful blood,
My purpose still is fixed to know the truth.
[Enter Phorbas, the head-shepherd.]
But see, the agéd man, old Phorbas, comes,
'Neath whose control the royal flocks are kept.
Dost thou remember still his face or name?840
Old Man: His form eludes my mind; not fully known,
And yet again not all unknown his face.
[To Phorbas.]
Old man, while Laius still was king, didst thou,
His shepherd, ever drive the royal flocks
To pasture here upon Cithaeron's slopes?
Phorbas: On fair Cithaeron's sunny slopes my flocks845
Have ever found the greenest pasturage.
Old Man: Dost thou know me?
Phorbas: But dim and indistinct
My memory.
Oedipus: Didst thou at any time
An infant boy deliver to this man?
[Phorbas
falters and turns pale.]
Come then, speak out! why dost thou hesitate?
And why does pallor overspread thy cheeks?
Why seek for words? The truth no respite needs.850
Phorbas: Thou speak'st of things long buried and forgot.
Oedipus: But speak, or pain shall drive thee to confess.
Phorbas: I gave a boy to him, a useless gift;
He never could have lived or known the light.
Old Man: The gods forbid! The child is living still;855
And may his life be long on earth, I pray.
Oedipus: Why dost thou think the child did not survive?
Phorbas: A slender rod of iron his ankles pierced,
And bound his limbs. This wound produced a sore,
Which by contagion spread o'er all his frame.
Old Man: Why question more? The fatal truth draws near.860
Who was that infant boy?
Phorbas: My lips are sealed.
Oedipus: Bring hither fire! Its flames shall loose thy speech.
Phorbas: Must truth be sought along such cruel paths?
I pray thy grace.
Oedipus: If I seem harsh to thee,
Or headstrong, thy revenge is in thy hand—865
The truth revealed. Then speak: who was the child?
Of what sire gotten? Of what mother born?
Phorbas: He was the son of her who is thy—wife.
Oedipus: Then yawn, O earth! and thou, O king of shades,
Into the lowest depths of hades hurl
This vile confounder of the son and sire!870
Ye citizens, on my incestuous head
Heap crushing rocks! with weapons slaughter me!
Let husbands, fathers, sons, and brothers—all
Whose name I have defiled, against me arm!
And let the poor, plague-smitten populace
Hurl blazing brands from off their funeral pyres!
The plague spot of the age, I wander here,875
Heaven-cursed pollutor of all sacred ties;
Who, in the day when first I breathed the air,
Was doomed to death.
[To himself.]
Call up thy courage now,
And dare some deed befitting these thy crimes.
Haste to thy palace and congratulate880
Thy mother's house increased by children's sons.
Messenger: When Oedipus his impious race perceived,915
And saw the warning fates had been fulfilled;
When on a hideous charge he stood condemned;
Then, with a deadly purpose in his breast,
Did he approach his palace, and in haste
Beneath those hated battlements he went.
And as a lion rages o'er the sands,
And, threat'ning, tosses back his tawny mane;920
So Oedipus advanced with blazing eyes,
And stern, mad face, while hollow groans burst forth,
And from his limbs there dripped a chilling sweat.
He foams and vents a stream of threat'ning words,
And from his heart his mighty grief o'erflows.
He in his madness seeks against himself925
Some heavy penalty and like his fate.
"Why do I wait for punishment?" he cries;
"Let my guilty heart with hostile sword be pierced,
Or overwhelmed with flames or crushing rocks!
Oh, for a tiger or some bird of prey,
To rend my tender flesh! Do thou thyself,
Who hast beheld full many deeds of blood,930
O cursed Cithaeron, from thy forests send
Thy wild beasts 'gainst me or thy greedy dogs.
Oh, that Agave were returned to earth!
But thou, my soul, why dost thou shrink from death?
For death alone can make thee innocent."
So spake he, and his impious hand he laid935
Upon the hilt and drew his glittering sword.
"And dost thou, then, with this brief punishment
Expect to pay thy mighty debt of guilt,
And with one blow wilt balance all thy sins?
Thy death would satisfy thy murdered sire;
But what to appease thy mother wilt thou do,
And those thy children, shamefully begot?
What recompense canst make unto thy land,940
Which for thy sin is smit with pestilence?
Such debts as these thou canst not pay by death.
Let Nature, who, in Oedipus alone,
Strange births devising, hath her laws o'erturned,
Subvert herself again to punish him.
Let it be mine, in never-ending round,945
To live and die, and to be born again,
That for my crimes by never-ending pain
I may atone. Now use thy wit, poor soul.
Since by repeated death thou canst not die,
Choose then some form of lingering death in life,
Some way by which, not numbered with the dead,
Nor yet the living, thou mayst linger on.950
So die, that in thy death thou mayst remain
Without the land wherein thy father dwells.
O soul, why dost thou hesitate?" And then
A sudden stream of tears o'erspread his face,
And wet his cheeks. "And can my tears suffice?
Too long my eyes these useless showers have poured;955
Nay, let them follow where the tears have flowed,
From out their sockets driven. O gods of wedlock,
Is this enough? These eyes must be removed."
He spoke with frenzied rage; and all the while
His cheeks were flaming with a dangerous light,
And his starting eyeballs strained to leave their seats.
His face was full of passion, fierce resolve.960
Groaning he thrust his hands into his eyes;
And those fierce eyes stood forth to meet his hands,
And eager followed of their own accord
Their kindred hands, as courting that deep wound.
Deep in with hookéd fingers he explores,965
And rends his eyeballs from their deepest roots.
Still stays his hands within those empty seats,
And tears the hollow sockets with his nails,
With savage joy, with vain and endless rage;970
So great
[6] his fear and hatred of the light.
He lifts his head, and with those empty eyes
The heavens surveying, tests his darkened sight.
Whatever from his mangled eyes still hangs,
He tears away, and now in triumph cries
To all the gods: "Oh, spare my country now,975
I pray; for I have done what must be done,
And I have paid the penalty I owed.
Now have I found at last a fitting night
To match my impious wedlock." As he speaks,
His face is watered by a hideous shower,
As the blood flows streaming from his ruptured veins.
Chorus: By fate we're driven; then yield to fate.980
No anxious, brooding care can change
The thread of destiny that falls
From that grim spindle of the Fates.
Whate'er we mortals suffer here,
Whate'er we do, all hath its birth
In that deep realm of mystery.
Stern Lachesis her distaff whirls,985
Spinning the threads of mortal men,
But with no backward-turning hand.
All things in ordered pathways go;
And on our natal day was fixed
Our day of death. Not God himself
Can change the current of our lives,
Which bears its own compelling force990
Within itself. Each life goes on
In order fixed and absolute,
Unmoved by prayer. Nay fear itself
Has been by many found a bane;
For, while they sought to shun their fate,
They came upon it in their flight.
But now the palace gates resound, and see,995
The sightless king himself, with none to guide,
Takes hitherward his blind and groping way.
Chorus: See where with hurried step Jocasta comes,
Beside herself and overcome with grief;1005
As when in maddened rage that Theban dame
Her son's head tore away and realized
What she had done. She wavers, longs to speak
To that afflicted one, and fears to speak.
Now shame at last has yielded to her grief,
And with a faltering tongue she speaks to him.
Jocasta: What shall I call thee? Son? Dost shun that name?
Thou art my son; thy shame confesseth it.1010
And yet, O son, though all unwilling, speak.
Why dost thou turn away thy sightless face?
Oedipus: Who now forbids me to enjoy my night?
Who gives me back mine eyes? My mother's voice!
Oh, awful sound! Now is my labor vain.
Stay where thou art! Each step is impious.
Let boundless seas our guilty souls divide,1015
And lands remote; and if beneath this land
Some other hangs, beholding other stars,
May that far country one of us receive.
Jocasta: What thou deplorest is the fault of fate.
A fated crime can leave no stain of sin.
Oedipus: Now cease thy words, O mother, spare my ears,1020
By these poor remnants of my mangled form,
By that unhallowed offspring of my blood,
And all that in the double names we bear
Is right and wrong!
Jocasta [to herself]: Why art thou listless now,
O soul of mine? Since thou hast shared his guilt,
Why hesitate to share his punishment?1025
The beauty of all human intercourse
Has fallen into ruin for thy sake,
Confused and lost, O wretch incestuous.
Not if the father of the gods himself
Should hurl at me his glittering thunderbolts,
Could I for my foul crimes atonement make,1030
Since I the name of mother have profaned.
Now death is welcome, but the way of death
Must I consider.
[To Oedipus.]
Come, thou parricide,
And lift thy hand against thy mother too.
This act is wanting to complete thy work.
[To herself.]
Now let the sword be drawn. By this good blade
Was Laius, my husband, slain—not so;1035
My husband's father, by his rightful name!
Shall I this weapon plunge into my breast,
Or thrust it deep within my waiting neck?
Nay, nay: thou know'st not how to choose a place.
Strike here, O hand, through this capacious womb,
Which (horrible!) the son and husband bore.
Oedipus [to Antigone, who has followed him into exile]: O thou,
who guid'st thy blinded father's steps,
Sole comfort of my weary heart, my child,
Begotten at such heavy cost to me,
Leave thou the unpropitious way I tread.
Why shouldst thou seek to lead my feet aright
Which fain would wander? Let me stumble on.5
Far better shall I find my way, alone,
The path that from the miseries of life
Shall take me, and the face of heaven and earth
Free from the sight of this ill-omened head.
O hand of mine, how little hast thou done!
For, though I do not see the light of day
Which looked upon my crime, still am I seen.
Unclasp thy clinging hand from mine; permit10
My sightless feet to wander where they will.
I go, I go where my Cithaeron lifts
His rugged crags on high; where to his dogs
Actaeon, speeding through the rocky ways,
Became a booty strange and pitiful;
Where through the dim old woods and dusky glades,15
By Bacchic frenzy fired, the mother wild
Her sisters led, rejoicing in the crime,
When on the waving thyrsus' point she bore
The gory head of Pentheus; where the bull
Of Zethus rushed along, the mangled corpse
Of Dirce dragging (through the thorny briars20
The mad beast's flight was traceable in blood);
Or where the cliff of Ino lifts its head
High o'er the heaving sea, into whose depths
The mother leaped, fleeing an unknown crime,
Yet daring other crime, by terror driven
To sink her son with her beneath the waves.25
Oh, happy they whose better fortune gave
Mothers like these! There is another place
Within these woods—my place, which calls to me,
To which I fain would haste; my eager feet
Will not delay, and thither will I go,
Unguided, all alone. Why hesitate30
To seek the place that most belongs to me?
Give back that death, Cithaeron, give again
That spot where once I lay upon thy breast,
That, where I should in infancy have died,
In age I may expire. Now let me pay
The debt I long have owed. O mountain, fell
And bloody, cruel, savage in thy rage,
Both when thou spar'st and when thou dost destroy,35
This body long ago was given to thee:
Obey my father's and my mother's will.
My soul is eager to receive at last
Its punishment. Why, daughter, why dost thou
With baleful love restrain me? Hold me not.
My father calls, and I will follow, yea,
Will follow him. Then cease to hold me back.40
See where the royal Laius comes in rage,
The blood-stained scepter of his ravished realm
Within his grasp. See, with his angry hands
He seeks to tear again my empty eyes.
O daughter, dost thou see my father, too?
I surely see him.
[To himself:] Now, O coward soul,
Brave but to mar a helpless part of thee,45
At length spew out that hateful life of thine.
Delay no more upon thy punishment,
And give thyself entirely unto death.
Why do I, sluggish, linger on in life?
There is no further crime that I can do.
Oh, my foreboding, wretched soul, there is!
[To Antigone.]
Flee from thy father, flee, while still a maid;
My mother's fate makes me of all afraid.50
Antigone: No power, my father, shall unloose my hold
Of thee; no one shall force me from thy side.
The illustrious, rich house of Labdacus,
Let my two brothers seek with strife to gain:
The greatest part of all my father's realm55
Is mine—my father's self. Nor shall this share
Be reft away from me by him who holds
By stolen right the scepter over Thebes,
Nor by that other brother who leads on
Against his native land th' Argolic hosts;
Though Jove himself should thunder out of heaven,
And hurl his bolt against my clinging hands,60
I would not let thee go. Though thou forbid,
I'll guide thee, O my father, 'gainst thy will,
And thy reluctant feet will I direct.
Seek'st thou the level plain? There will I go.
The rugged mountain heights? I'll not oppose,
But will precede thy way. Use me as guide
Wherever thou wouldst go; since for us both65
Is every path selected that thou tread'st.
With me, but not without me, canst thou die.
There springs a lofty cliff, precipitous,
And looks far out upon the sea below:
Shall we seek this? There hangs a naked rock,
There yawns the riven earth with gaping jaws:70
Wouldst thou to these? And there a mountain stream
In roaring torrent falls, and 'neath its waves
Worn fragments of the mountain roll along:
Shall we rush headlong in? Where thou wouldst go,
I go, but always first. I'll not oppose
Nor urge. Dost thou desire to be destroyed?
Is death thy highest wish? If thou dost die,75
I go before thee; if thou liv'st, I follow.
But change thy mind, call up thine old-time strength,
And with a mighty will thy sorrows curb.
Resist, since in such ills defeat is death.
Oedipus: Whence springs so rare a spirit in a house80
So impious? Whence comes this noble maid,
Unlike her race? Can it be true indeed?
Has any pious thing been born of me?
Ne'er would it be, for well I know my fates,
Except for harmful ends. Nature herself
Has changed her laws: now shall the stream, reversed,85
Bear back its whirling waters to their source;
The torch of Phoebus shall bring in the night,
And day be heralded by Hesperus;
And, that I may but add unto my woe,
I, too, shall pious be. Not to be saved—
This is for Oedipus the only cure.
Let me avenge my father, unavenged90
Till now. My hand, why dost thou hesitate
To exact the penalty I owe to him?
Whatever I have suffered hitherto
Was for my mother's sake. Release my hand,
Undaunted girl; thou but delay'st my death,
And thy living father's funeral prolong'st.95
Let earth conceal at last this hated form.
Thou wrongest me, though with a kind intent,
And deem'st it piety to keep thy sire
From burial. But they are one in guilt,
Both he who forces death upon a man
Who fain would live, and he who holds him back
Who longs to die. And yet they are not one;
For surely is the last the worser sin.100
To be condemned to death were better far
For me than to be saved from death. Then cease,
My child, from this attempt. I have reserved
For my own will the right to live or die.
Right gladly did I yield the sovereignty
O'er all my realm; yet o'er myself alone
I still am king. If thou in very truth105
Art loyal to me, give me back my sword,
That sword already with my father's blood
Defiled. Wilt give it back? Or do my sons
Retain my sword together with my throne?
'Tis well. Wherever there is need of crime,
There let it be; I gladly give it up.
Let both my sons possess the sword. But thou,
Flames, rather, and a heap of wood prepare;110
Then will I fling myself upon the pyre,
Cling in its hot embrace, and hide myself
Within its deadly hold. There will I loose
This stubborn soul, and give to mortal dust
Whatever lives in me. Where is the sea?
Come, lead me where some beetling crag juts out,115
Or where Ismenus rolls his savage waves;
Or thither would I go and end my life,
Where once upon a jutting rock abode
The hybrid Sphinx and wove her crafty speech.120
Direct me thither, set thy father there.
Let not that dreadful seat be empty long,
But place me there, a greater monster still.
There will I sit and of my fate propose
A riddle dark which no man will resolve.
Come listen, ye, who plow the Theban fields;
Whoever worships in the sacred grove125
Of Cadmus, for the deadly serpent famed,
Where hallowed Dirce lies; whoever drinks
Eurotas' stream; ye who in Sparta dwell,
Illustrious for its heavenly brothers twain;
And ye who reap Boeotia's fertile fields,
The plains of Elis and Parnassus' slopes:130
What riddle like to this could she propose,
That curse of Thebes, who wove destructive words
In puzzling measures? What so dark as this?
He was his grandsire's son-in-law, and yet
His father's rival; brother of his sons,135
And father of his brothers; at one birth
The granddame bore unto her husband sons,
And grandson's to herself. Who can unwind
A tangle such as this? E'en I myself,
Who bore the spoils of triumph o'er the Sphinx,
Stand mute before the riddle of my fate.