Page:Tragedies of Sophocles (Plumptre 1878).djvu/115

Rh Or me, or any man who sees the light.

Teir. 'Tis not thy doom to owe thy fall to me;

Apollo is enough, be His the task.

Œdip. Are these devices Creon's, or thine own?

Teir. It is not Creon harms thee, but thyself.

Œdip. Ο wealth, and sovereignty, and noblest skill

Surpassing skill in life so envy-fraught,

How great the ill-will dogging all your steps!

If for the sake of kingship, which the state

Hath given, unasked for, freely in mine hands,

Creon the faithful, found my fiend throughout,

Now seeks with masked attack to drive me forth,

And hires this wizard, plotter of foul schemes,

A vagrant mountebank, whose sight is clear

For pay alone, but in his art stone-blind.

Is it not so? When wast thou true seer found?

Why, when the monster with her song was here,

Spak'st thou no word our countrymen to help?

And yet the riddle lay above the ken

Of common men, and called for prophet's skill.

And this thou show'dst thou had'st not, nor by bird,

Nor any God made known; but then I came,

I, Œdipus, who nothing know, and slew her,

With mine own counsel winning, all untaught

By flight of birds. And now thou would'st expel me,

And think'st to take thy stand by Creon's throne.

But, as I think, both thou and he that plans

With thee, will hunt this mischief to your cost;

And but that I must think of thee as old,

Thou had'st learnt wisdom, suffering what thou plann'st.

Chorus. Far as we dare to guess, we think his words,

And thine, Ο Œdipus, in wrath are said.

Not such as these we need, but this to see,

How best to solve the God's great oracles.