Chapter II: Act I

_Oedipus_: Now night has fled; and with a wavering gleam
Returns the sun; all wrapped in murky clouds
His beams arise, and with their baleful light
Shall soon look forth upon our stricken homes,
And day reveal the havoc of the night. 5
Oh, who in all this realm is glad? O fate,
That seemest good, how many ills lie hid
Behind thy smiling face! As lofty peaks
Most feel the winds' abuse; and as the cliff,
That with its rocky front divides the deep,
The waves of e'en a quiet sea assail; 10
So is the loftiest power the most exposed
To hostile fate's assaults.
'Twas well conceived
That I should flee the kingdom of my sire,
Old Polybus, and from my fears be freed,
A homeless exile, dauntless, wandering.
Be heaven and all the gods my witnesses,
I chanced upon this realm. Yet even now
The dreadful fear remains that by my hand 15
My sire shall die. Thus spoke the Delphic god.
And still another, greater sin he showed.
And can there be a blacker crime than this,
A father slain? Oh, cursed impiety!
'Twere shame to tell the hideous oracle:
For Phoebus warned me of my father's couch, 20
And impious wedlock. 'Twas the fear of this
That drove me headlong from my father's realm,
And for no sin I left my native land.
All self-distrustful did I well secure
Thy sacred laws, O mother Nature; still, 25
When in the heart a mighty dread abides,
Though well assured it cannot be fulfilled,
The fear remains. I fear exceedingly,
Nor can I trust myself unto myself.
And even now the fates are aimed at me.
For what am I to think, when this fell pest,
Although it lays its blighting hand on all, 30
Spares me alone? For what new horror now
Am I reserved? Amidst my city's woes,
'Mid funeral pyres that ever must be wet
With tears of grief afresh, 'mid heaps of slain,
I stand unscathed. And couldst thou hope that thou,
A culprit at the bar of God, shouldst gain 35
For guilt a wholesome kingdom in return?
Nay, rather, I myself infect the air.
For now no breeze with its soft breath relieves
Our spirits suffocating with the heat;
No gentle zephyrs breathe upon the land;
But Titan with the dog-star's scorching fires
Doth parch us, pressing hard upon the back 40
Of Nemea's lion. From their wonted streams
The waters all have fled, and from the herbs
Their accustomed green. Now Dirce's fount is dry;
While to a trickling rill Ismenus' flood
Hath shrunk, and barely laves the naked sands.
Athwart the sky doth Phoebus' sister glide
With paling light, and, 'mid the lowering clouds, 45
The darkling heavens fade. No starlight gleams
Amid the gloomy silence of the night,
But heavy mists brood low upon the earth;
And those bright mansions of the heavenly gods
Are sicklied over with the hues of hell.
The full-grown harvest doth withhold its fruit;
And, though the yellow fields stand thick with corn, 50
Upon the stalk the shriveled grain is dead.
No class is free from this destructive plague,
But every age and sex falls equally;
Where youth with age, and sire with son are joined,
And wife and husband are together burned. 55
Now funerals claim no more their wonted grief;
The magnitude of woe hath dried our eyes;
And tears, the last resource of woeful hearts,
Have perished utterly. The stricken sire
Here bears his son unto the funeral flames; 60
And there the mother lays her dead child down,
And hastes to bring another to the pyre.
Nay, in the midst of grief a new woe springs;
For, while they minister unto the dead,
Themselves need funeral rites. Anon they burn
With others' fires the bodies of their friends.
The fire is stol'n, for in their wretchedness 65
No shame remains. No separate tombs receive
The hallowed bones; mere burning is enough.
How small a covering their ashes need!
And yet the land does not suffice for all;
And now the very woods have failed the pyre.
Nor prayers nor skill avail to serve the sick,
For even they who own the healing art
Are smitten down. The baleful pestilence
Removes the check that would restrain its force. 70
So, prostrate at the altar, do I fall
And, stretching suppliant hands, I pray the gods
To grant a speedy end; that in my death
I may anticipate my falling throne,
Nor be myself the last of all to die,
The sole surviving remnant of my realm.
O gods of heaven, too hard! O heavy fate! 75
Is death to be denied to me alone,
So easy for all else? Come, fly the land
Thy baleful touch has tainted. Leave thou here
The grief, the death, the pestilential air,
Which with thyself thou bring'st. Go speed thy flight
To any land, e'en to thy parents' realm. 80

_Jocasta_
[_who has entered in time to hear her husband's last words_]: What
boots it, husband, to augment thy woes
With lamentations? For I think, indeed,
This very thing is regal, to endure
Adversity, and all the more to stand,
With heart more valiant and with foot more sure,
When the weight of empire totters to its fall. 85
For 'tis not manly to present thy back
To fortunes's darts.

_Oedipus_: Not mine the guilt of fear;
My valor feels no such ignoble throes.
Should swords be drawn against me, should the power,
The dreadful power of Mars upon me rush, 90
Against the very giants would I stand.
The Sphinx I fled not when she wove her words
In mystic measures, but I bore to look
Upon the bloody jaws of that fell bard,
And on the ground, all white with scattered bones.
But when, from a lofty cliff, with threatening mien, 95
The baleful creature poised her wings to strike,
And, like a savage lion, lashed her tail,[1]
In act to spring; still did I dare my fate
And ask her riddle. Then with horrid sound
Of deadly jaws together crashed, she spake;
The while her claws, impatient of delay,
And eager for my vitals, rent the rock. 100
But the close-wrought words of fate with guile entwined,
And that dark riddle of the wingéd beast
Did I resolve.

_Jocasta_: What meant'st then thou by these
Thy maddened prayers for death? Thou mightst have died.
But no; the very scepter in thy hand
Is thy reward for that fell Sphinx destroyed. 105

_Oedipus_: Yea that, the artful monster's cruel shade,
Doth war against me still. Now she alone,
In vengeance for her death, is wasting Thebes.
But now, one only way of safety still is left,
If Phoebus show us not of safety all bereft.

* * * * *

[_Enter the_ Chorus of Theban elders, _deploring the violence of the plague._]

_Chorus_: How art thou fall'n, O glorious stock 110
Of Cadmus, thou and Thebes in one!
How dost thou see, poor ruined Thebes,
Thy lands laid waste and tenantless.
And thou, O Theban Bacchus, hear:
That hardy soldiery of thine,
Thy comrades to the farthest Ind,
Who dared invade the Eastern plains, 115
And plant thy banners at the gates of dawn--
Behold, destruction feeds on them.
They saw the blessed Arabes,
'Mid spicy groves; and the fleeing steeds
Of the Parthian, deadliest when he flees;
They trod the marge of the ruddy sea, 120
Where Phoebus his rising beams displays,
And the day reveals; where his nearer fires
Darken the naked Indians.
Yea we, that race invincible,
Beneath the hand of greedy fate 125
Are falling fast.
The gloomy retinue of death
In march unceasing hurries on;
The grieving line unending hastes
To the place of death. Space fails the throng.
For, though seven gates stand open wide, 130
Still for the crowding funerals
'Tis not enough; for everywhere
Is carnage seen, and death treads hard
Upon the heels of death.
The sluggish ewes first felt the blight,
For the woolly flock the rich grass cropped
To its own doom. At the victim's neck 135
The priest stood still, in act to strike;
But while his hand still poised the blow,
Behold, the bull, with gilded horns,
Fell heavily; whereat his neck,
Beneath the shock of his huge weight,
Was broken and asunder yawned.
No blood the sacred weapon stained, 140
But from the wound dark gore oozed forth.
The steed a sudden languor feels,
And stumbles in his circling course,
While from his downward-sinking side
His rider falls.
The abandoned flocks lie in the fields; 145
The bull amid his dying herd
Is pining; and the shepherd fails
His scanty flock, for he himself
'Mid his wasting kine is perishing.
The stag no more fears the ravenous wolf;
No longer the lion's roar is heard; 150
The shaggy bear has lost her rage,
And the lurking serpent his deadly sting;
For parched and dying now he lies,
With venom dried.
No more do the woods, with leafage crowned,
Spread out their shade in the mountain glens; 155
No more are fields with verdure clad;
No vines bend low with laden arms;
For the very earth has felt the breath
Of our dire pestilence.
Through the riven bars of Erebus, 160
With torches lit in Tartara,
The raging band of the Furies troop;
Dark Phlegethon has changed his course,
And forced the waters of the Styx
To mingle with our Theban streams.
Grim Death opes wide his greedy jaws, 165
And all his baleful wings outspreads.
And he who plies that swollen stream
In his roomy skiff, though his age is fresh
And hardy, scarce can raise his arms,
O'erwearied with his constant toil
And the passage of the endless throng. 170
'Tis even rumored that the dog
Hath burst the chains of Taenara,
And through our fields is wandering.
Now dreadful prodigies appear:
The earth gives out a rumbling sound,
And ghosts go stealing through the groves,
Larger than mortal forms; and twice 175
The trees of our Cadmean woods
Have trembled sore and shed their snows;
Twice Dirce flowed with streams of blood;
And in the stilly night we heard
The baying of Amphion's hounds.
Oh, cruel, strange new form of death, 180
And worse than death! The sluggish limbs
Are with a weary languor seized;
The sickly cheek with fever burns,
And all the head with loathsome sores
Is blotched. Now heated vapors rise
And scorch with fever's flames the brain
Within the body's citadel,
And the throbbing temples swell with blood. 185
The eyeballs start; the accurséd fire
Devours the limbs; the ears resound,
And from the nostrils dark blood drips
And strains apart the swelling veins. 190
Now quick convulsions rend and tear
The inmost vitals.
Now to their burning hearts they strain
Cold stones to soothe their agony;
And they, whom laxer care permits,
Since they who should control are dead,
The fountains seek, and feed their thirst 195
With copious draughts. The smitten throng
All prostrate at the altars lie
And pray for death; and this alone
The gods, compliant, grant to them.
Men seek the sacred fanes, and pray,
Not that the gods may be appeased,
But glutted with their feast of death. 200
[Creon _is seen approaching_.]
But who with hasty step the palace seeks?
Is this our Creon, high in birth and deed,
Or does my sickened soul see false for true?
'Tis Creon's self, in answer to our prayer. 205

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Reading, _caudam_.