Page:Tragedies of Seneca (1907) Miller.djvu/77

Rh Within its deadly hold. There will I loose This stubborn soul, and give to mortal dust Whatever lives in me. Where is the sea? Come, lead me where some beetling crag juts out, Or where Ismenus rolls his savage waves; Or thither would I go and end my life, Where once upon a jutting rock abode The hybrid Sphinx and wove her crafty speech. Direct me thither, set thy father there. Let not that dreadful seat be empty long, But place me there, a greater monster still. There will I sit and of my fate propose A riddle dark which no man will resolve. Come listen, ye, who plow the Theban fields; Whoever worships in the sacred grove Of Cadmus, for the deadly serpent famed, Where hallowed Dirce lies; whoever drinks Eurotas' stream; ye who in Sparta dwell, Illustrious for its heavenly brothers twain; And ye who reap Boeotia's fertile fields, The plains of Elis and Parnassus' slopes: What riddle like to this could she propose, That curse of Thebes, who wove destructive words In puzzling measures? What so dark as this? He was his grandsire's son-in-law, and yet His father's rival; brother of his sons, And father of his brothers; at one birth The granddame bore unto her husband sons, And grandson's to herself. Who can unwind A tangle such as this? E'en I myself, Who bore the spoils of triumph o'er the Sphinx, Stand mute before the riddle of my fate.

[Has a speech of Antigone dropped out at this point, or does Oedipus hark back to a previous thought after a dramatic pause?] But why waste further words? Why dost thou try To soften my determined heart with prayers? My will is fixed to pour this spirit forth Which now for long has struggled sore with death,