Page:The Antigone of Sophocles (1911).djvu/60

56 Take heed! Thou standest on the verge of fate.

What meanest thou? Thy message makes me quake.

Hear thou the warning tokens of my art

And thou wilt know. No sooner had I ta’en

My seat in my accustomed place, to hear

The birds that flocked around my ancient seat

Of divination, when I heard a strange

And unfamiliar sound among the screams

Of rage ill-omened, cries confused that made

Their wonted language clear sound like a jargon.

And I perceived that with their talons they

Were clawing one another savagely;

The whirr of wings proclaimed the carnage there.

Alarmed, I tried at once burnt-sacrifice

Upon a kindled altar, but no flame

Leaped from the offerings—an ooze, instead,

Of moisture forth upon the embers dripped,

Exuding from the thigh-bones, smoked and spewed,

The bursting gall was scattered through the air,

While all the fat which had enwrapped the thighs

Was melted off, ran down in streams, and left

The thigh-bones bare. Such failing oracles

Derived from auguries that failed to yield

A sign, this boy informed me of; for he

Doth act as guide to me, as I to others.

And ’t is thy will that brings this malady

Upon the state. For all our altars are defiled,

Our hearths by dogs and vultures, with the food

Torn from the fallen son of Œdipus

Ill-starred. And so the gods do not accept

Our prayers and sacrifices now, nor flame

Of thigh-bones; and no bird shrieks forth its cry

Of warning, forasmuch as all have made

A slain man’s gore their succulent repast.

Think then, my son, on this. A man may err;

But erring, if he cure the ill, stiffnecked

Remain not in his error quite immovable,

No longer he insensate and unblest.

For folly still is born of stubbornness: