Page:Tragedies of Sophocles (Plumptre 1878).djvu/547

Rh Bearing this new, drear doom,

Disowned by those who live, and those whose life hath fled.

Thou hast gone far in boldness, yea, too far,

And now against the throne of Right on high,

My child, thou stumblest in thy waywardness;

Thou fillest up thy father's misery.

Ah! there thou touchest on

My bitterest care,

The thrice-told tale of woe

My sire did bear,

The fate of all who take

From Labdacos their name;

Woes of my mother's bed!

Embrace of foulest shame,

Mother's and son's, whence I

(O misery!) was born;

Whom now I go to meet,

Unwed, accursed, forlorn.

Ah, brother! thou, in evil wedlock wed,

Hast, in that death of thine,

Made me, who still survived, as numbered with the dead.

Holy it may be, holy awe to shew,

But power with him with whom due power doth rest

Admits not of defiance without sin;

And thou from self-willed pride yet sufferest.