Page:The Antigone of Sophocles (1911).djvu/15

SOPHOCLES. of whom you are? Your mother’s and father’s curse shall drive you from this land with eyes that now see the light then in darkness shrouded. Therefore calumniate Creon, reproach me for my message: for in all the world there is none that will be more miserably crushed than you.”

“Vengeance! Death! Confusion! Such words from him! Damnation seize you! Out of my sight! Hence! Avaunt! Back whence you came and rid me of your presence!”

“I had not come, had you not sent for me.”

“I knew not that you would talk so foolishly, or hardly would I have called you in.”

“I am—in your esteem—a fool; but to your parents wise.”

“Parents? Stay! Who are they? Who?”

“This day begets, this day destroys you.”

“How in riddles darkly-syllabled each point is glanced at.”

“Are not you most skilled in guessing riddles? I will go. Lead me, boy.”

“Aye, lead him. Your presence has been annoyance, your absence will please me much.”

“I will go, when I have spoken what I came to speak,—but not in fear of your frown; for you can never do me hurt. And I tell you that the man you have been seeking, he is here, in this place, passing for a foreigner, but in the end proved a Theban born, and he will not be pleased to find it out. Then sightless, though now endowed with sight, a beggar then, though now rich, with staff in hand he shall wander to a strange land. And he shall be found to be at once brother and father of his own sons, husband and son of her who bare him,—possessor of his father’s bed and shedder of his father’s blood. Go thou within and think on that, and if thou dost find that I have lied, deny henceforth that I possess the gift of prophecy.”

The chorus waver. They can not give credence to the