Page:Oedipus, King of Thebes (Murray 1911).djvu/63

vv. 808–828 But watched, and as I passed him on the road

Down on my head his iron-branchèd goad

Stabbed. But, by heaven, he rued it! In a flash

I swung my staff and saw the old man crash

Back from his car in blood. Then all of them

I slew.

Oh, if that man’s unspoken name

Had aught of Laïus in him, in God’s eye

What man doth move more miserable than I,

More dogged by the hate of heaven! No man, kin

Nor stranger, any more may take me in;

No man may greet me with a word, but all

Cast me from out their houses. And withal

’Twas mine own self that laid upon my life

These curses.—And I hold the dead man’s wife

In these polluting arms that spilt his soul.

Am I a thing born evil? Am I foul

In every vein? Thebes now doth banish me,

And never in this exile must I see

Mine ancient folk of Corinth, never tread

The land that bore me; else my mother’s bed

Shall be defiled, and Polybus, my good

Father, who loved me well, be rolled in blood.

If one should dream that such a world began

In some slow devil’s heart, that hated man,

Who should deny him? —God, as thou art clean,

Suffer not this, oh, suffer not this sin

To be, that e’er I look on such a day!

Out of all vision of mankind away

To darkness let me fall ere such a fate

Touch me, so unclean and so desolate!