Page:Sophocles' King Oedipus.pdf/16

6 No new life fills the empty place—ghost flits after ghost

To that god-trodden western shore, as flit benighted birds.

Sorrow speaks to sorrow and finds no comfort in words.

Hurry him from the land of Thebes with a fair wind behind

Out on to that formless deep where not a man can find

Hold for an anchor fluke, for all is world­-enfolding sea;

Master of the thundercloud, set the lightning free,

And add the thunder-stone to that and fling them on his head

For death is all the fashion now, till even death be dead.

We call against the pallid face of this god-hated god

The springing heel of Artemis in the hunting sandal shod,

The towsel-headed Maenads, blown torch and drunken sound,

The stately Lysian king himself with golden fillet crowned,

And in his hands the golden bow and the stretched golden string,

And Bacchus’ wine-ensanguined face that all the Maenads sing.