Page:Sophocles - Seven Plays, 1900.djvu/65

995–1032]

. Grateful experience owns the benefit.

. Take heed. Again thou art on an edge of peril.

. What is it? How I shudder at thy word!

. The tokens of mine art shall make thee know.

As I was sitting on that ancient seat

Of divination, where I might command

Sure cognisance of every bird of the air,

I heard strange clamouring of fowl, that screeched

In furious dissonance; and, I could tell,

Talons were bloodily engaged—the whirr

Of wings told a clear tale. At once, in fear,

I tried burnt sacrifice at the high altar:

Where from the offering the fire-god refused

To gleam; but a dank humour from the bones

Dripped on the embers with a sputtering fume.

The gall was spirtled high in air; the thighs

Lay wasting, bared of their enclosing fat.

Such failing tokens of blurred augury

This youth reported, who is guide to me,

As I to others. And this evil state

Is come upon the city from thy will:

Because our altars—yea, our sacred hearths—

Are everywhere infected from the mouths

Of dogs or beak of vulture that hath fed

On Oedipus’ unhappy slaughtered son.

And then at sacrifice the Gods refuse

Our prayers and savour of the thigh-bone fat—

And of ill presage is the thickening cry

Of bird that battens upon human gore.

Now, then, my son, take thought. A man may err;

But he is not insensate or foredoomed

To ruin, who, when he hath lapsed to evil,

Stands not inflexible, but heals the harm.

The obstinate man still earns the name of fool.

Urge not contention with the dead, nor stab

The fallen. What valour is ’t to slay the slain?

I have thought well of this, and say it with care;

And careful counsel, that brings gain withal,

Is precious to the understanding soul.