Page:Tragedies of Sophocles (Plumptre 1878).djvu/117

Rh Œdip. [Starting forward.] What? Stay thy foot.

What mortal gave me birth?

Teir. This day shall give thy birth, and work thy doom.

Œdip. What riddles dark and dim thou lov'st to speak.

Teir. Yes. But thy skill excels in solving such.

Œdip. Scoff thou at that in which thou 'lt find me strong.

Teir. And yet this same success has worked thy fall.

Œdip. I little care, if I have saved the state.

Teir. Well, then, I go. Do thou, boy, lead me on!

Œdip. Let him lead on. Most hateful art thou near;

Thou can'st not pain me more when thou art gone.

Teir. I go then, having said the things I came

To say. No fear of thee compels me. Thine

Is not the power to hurt me. And I say,

This man whom thou dost seek with hue-and-cry,

As murderer of Laios, he is here,

In show an alien sojourner, but in truth

A homeborn Theban. No delight to him

Will that discovery bring. Blind, having seen,

Poor, having rolled in wealth,—he, with a staff

Feeling his way, to a strange land shall go!

And to his sons shall he be seen at once

Father and brother, and of her who bore him

Husband and son, sharing his father's bed,

His father's murd'rer. Go thou then within,

And brood o'er this, and, if thou find'st me fail,

Say that my skill in prophecy is gone. [Exeunt and.

Chorus. Who was it that the rock oracular

Of Delphi spake of, working

With bloody hands of all dread deeds most dread?

Time is it now for him,