Page:The Antigone of Sophocles (1911).djvu/21

SOPHOCLES. in the ancient and modern world contains anything so fine as her exit.

''After the choral song a second messenger enters. He comes from the palace''.

Oh what sights, what deeds, what grief! Neither the Phasis nor the Ister could wash this dwelling clean. Jocasta’s dead!—No sooner entered than she rushed straight to her bridal bed, clutching her hair in both hands, and began to call on Laius, bewailing the fate that brought about the procreation of a son that was to slay his sire and she a widow left only to bear seed to her own son,—bemoaning the bed where she bore husband to husband and son to son. Then in burst Œdipus with such a shriek that we could not watch her anguish to the end. To and fro he rushed and begged us for a sword, and calling on his wife who was no wife, but a field tilled for both his children and himself. Some god above showed her to him, not we, and with a wild and dreadful cry he sprang toward the door, forced the bolts from their sockets, and rushed into the room. There he saw his wife hanging in a noose of twisted cords. With a great cry of woe he loosed the knot and laid her on the floor. Then there was an awful sight to see. From her vesture he tore the brooches of beaten gold, raised them on high and drove them full into his own eyeballs, as he shouted, “No more shall you behold all the wrongs I suffered, all I wrought, but in darkness see what should not be seen, and know not whom I longed to know!” Not once, but many times he smote, and at each blow bedewed his beard—not a drizzling ooze but a dark shower of blood fell from his eyes unceasingly. He cries now for some one to fling the doors wide open and show to all the Thebans the father’s murderer, the mother’s—too foul for utterance—declaring that he will cast himself out and no more abide in Thebes, to his house a curse self-accurst. Look! the gates are opening. Soon will you behold a spectacle that even he who loathes must pity.