Page:Tragedies of Euripides (Way 1898) v3.djvu/74

46 (Ant.) Gorges mysterious of frondage, Cithæron

Beast-haunted, O birth-bed of snows, O thou apple of Artemis' eye,

Ah that thou ne'er hadst received him, the babe of Jocasta, to rear on

Thy lap such a fosterling, Oedipus, thrust from his home as to die,

Life-marked with the brooch-pin golden-looping!

And O that the portent, the wings of the Sphinx from the mountain swooping,

Down on the land for its woe had not come,

The maiden that sang us a chant of doom,

An untuneable cry,

When with talons of feet and of hands on the ramparts of Kadmus she darted,

And bearing his offspring to sun-litten cloudland untrodden departed,

She whom Hades from dens of the dead

Against Kadmus' children sped!

But a new curse lights upon Thebes and her halls;

For 'twixt Oedipus' sons the hell-seed falls

Of strife, and it blossometh red.

For never may aught that is utter shame

Bear honour's name;

Nay, nor the unblest spousal's fruit

Are sons true-born, but with stain they pollute

Their begetter, the stock that sprang from the self-same root.

(Epode) Thou didst bear, O land, thou didst bear of old—

For I heard, yea, I heard in mine home, in an alien tongue, the story—