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  MESSENGER

  Those ankle joints are evidence enow.

  OEDIPUS

  Ah, why remind me of that ancient sore?

  MESSENGER

  I loosed the pin that riveted thy feet.

  OEDIPUS

  Yes, from my cradle that dread brand I bore.

  MESSENGER

  Whence thou deriv’st the name that still is thine.

  OEDIPUS

  Who did it? I adjure thee, tell me who

  Say, was it father, mother?

  MESSENGER

  I know not.

  The man from whom I had thee may know more.

  OEDIPUS

  What, did another find me, not thyself?

  MESSENGER

  Not I; another shepherd gave thee me.

  OEDIPUS

  Who was he? Would’st thou know again the man?

  MESSENGER

  He passed indeed for one of Laius’ house.

  OEDIPUS

  The king who ruled the country long ago?

  MESSENGER

  The same: he was a herdsman of the king.

  OEDIPUS

  And is he living still for me to see him?

  MESSENGER

  His fellow-countrymen should best know that.

  OEDIPUS

  Doth any bystander among you know

  The herd he speaks of, or by seeing him

  Afield or in the city? answer straight!

  The hour hath come to clear this business up.

  CHORUS

  Methinks he means none other than the hind

  Whom thou anon wert fain to see; but that

  Our queen Jocasta best of all could tell.

  OEDIPUS

  Madam, dost know the man we sent to fetch?

  Is the same of whom the stranger speaks?

  JOCASTA

  Who is the man? What matter? Let it be.

  ‘Twere waste of thought to weigh such idle words.

  OEDIPUS

  No, with such guiding clues I cannot fail

  To bring to light the secret of my birth.

  JOCASTA

  Oh, as thou carest for thy life, give o’er

  This quest. Enough the anguish I endure.

  OEDIPUS

  Be of good cheer; though I be proved the son

  Of a bondwoman, aye, through three descents

  Triply a slave, thy honor is unsmirched.

  JOCASTA

  Yet humor me, I pray thee; do not this.

  OEDIPUS

  I cannot; I must probe this matter home.

  JOCASTA

  ’Tis for thy sake I advise thee for the best.

  OEDIPUS

  I grow impatient of this best advice.

  JOCASTA

  Ah mayst thou ne’er discover who thou art!

  OEDIPUS

  Go, fetch me here the herd, and leave yon woman

  To glory in her pride of ancestry.

  JOCASTA

  O woe is thee, poor wretch! With that last word

  I leave thee, henceforth silent evermore.

  [Exit JOCASTA]

  CHORUS

  Why, Oedipus, why stung with passionate grief

  Hath the queen thus departed? Much I fear

  From this dead calm will burst a storm of woes.

  OEDIPUS

  Let the storm burst, my fixed resolve still holds,

  To learn my lineage, be it ne’er so low.

  It may be she with all a woman’s pride

  Thinks scorn of my base parentage. But I

  Who rank myself as Fortune’s favorite child,

  The giver of good gifts, shall not be shamed.

  She is my mother and the changing moons

  My brethren, and with them I wax and wane.

  Thus sprung why should I fear to trace my birth?

  Nothing can make me other than I am.

  CHORUS

  (Str.)

  If my soul prophetic err not, if my wisdom aught avail,

  Thee, Cithaeron, I shall hail,

  As the nurse and foster-mother of our Oedipus shall greet

  Ere tomorrow’s full moon rises, and exalt thee as is meet.

  Dance and song shall hymn thy praises, lover of our royal race.

  Phoebus, may my words find grace!

  (Ant.)

  Child, who bare thee, nymph or goddess? sure thy sure was more than

  man,

  Haply the hill-roamer Pan.

  Of did Loxias beget thee, for he haunts the upland wold;

  Or Cyllene’s lord, or Bacchus, dweller on the hilltops cold?

  Did some Heliconian Oread give him thee, a new-born joy?

  Nymphs with whom he love to toy?

  OEDIPUS

  Elders, if I, who never yet before

  Have met the man, may make a guess, methinks

  I see the herdsman who we long have sought;

  His time-worn aspect matches with the years

  Of yonder aged messenger; besides

  I seem to recognize the men who bring him

  As servants of my own. But you, perchance,

  Having in past days known or seen the herd,

  May better by sure knowledge my surmise.

  CHORUS

  I recognize him; one of Laius’ house;

  A simple hind, but true as any man.

  [Enter HERDSMAN.]

  OEDIPUS

  Corinthian, stranger, I address thee first,

  Is this the man thou meanest!

  MESSENGER

  This is he.

  OEDIPUS

  And now old man, look up and answer all

  I ask thee. Wast thou once of Laius’ house?

  HERDSMAN

  I was, a thrall, not purchased but home-bred.

  OEDIPUS

  What was thy business? how wast thou employed?

  HERDSMAN

  The best part of my life I tended sheep.

  OEDIPUS

  What were the pastures thou didst most frequent?

  HERDSMAN

  Cithaeron and the neighboring alps.

  OEDIPUS

  Then there

  Thou must have known yon man, at least by fame?

  HERDSMAN

  Yon man? in what way? what man dost thou mean?

  OEDIPUS

  The man here, having met him in past times...

  HERDSMAN

  Off-hand I cannot call him well to mind.

  MESSENGER

  No wonder, master. But I will revive

  His blunted memories. Sure he can recall

  What time together both we drove our flocks,

  He two, I one, on the Cithaeron range,

  For three long summers; I his mate from spring

  Till rose Arcturus; then in winter time

  I led mine home, he his to Laius’ folds.

  Did these things happen as I say, or no?

  HERDSMAN

  ’Tis long ago, but all thou say’st is true.

  MESSENGER

  Well, thou mast then remember giving me

  A child to rear as my own foster-son?

  HERDSMAN

  Why dost thou ask this question? What of that?

  MESSENGER

  Friend, he that stands before thee was that child.

  HERDSMAN

  A plague upon thee! Hold thy wanton tongue!

  OEDIPUS

  Softly, old man, rebuke him not; thy words

  Are more deserving chastisement than his.

  HERDSMAN

  O best of masters, what is my offense?

  OEDIPUS

  Not answering what he asks about the child.

  HERDSMAN

  He speaks at random, babbles like a fool.

  OEDIPUS

  If thou lack’st grace to speak, I’ll loose thy tongue.

  HERDSMAN

  For mercy’s sake abuse not an old man.

  OEDIPUS

  Arrest the villain, seize and pinion him!


  HERDSMAN

  Alack, alack!

  What have I done? what wouldst thou further learn?

  OEDIPUS

  Didst give this man the child of whom he asks?

  HERDSMAN

  I did; and would that I had died that day!

  OEDIPUS

  And die thou shalt unless thou tell the truth.

  HERDSMAN

  But, if I tell it, I am doubly lost.

  OEDIPUS

  The knave methinks will still prevaricate.

  HERDSMAN

  Nay, I confessed I gave it long ago.

  OEDIPUS

  Whence came it? was it thine, or given to thee?

  HERDSMAN

  I had it from another, ’twas not mine.

  OEDIPUS

  From whom of these our townsmen, and what house?

  HERDSMAN

  Forbear for God’s sake, master, ask no more.

  OEDIPUS

  If I must question thee again, thou’rt lost.

  HERDSMAN

  Well then — it was a child of Laius’ house.

  OEDIPUS

  Slave-born or one of Laius’ own race?

  HERDSMAN

  Ah me!

  I stand upon the perilous edge of speech.

  OEDIPUS

  And I of hearing, but I still must hear.

  HERDSMAN

  Know then the child was by repute his own,

  But she within, thy consort best could tell.

  OEDIPUS

  What! she, she gave it thee?

  HERDSMAN

  ’Tis so, my king.

  OEDIPUS

  With what intent?

  HERDSMAN

  To make away with it.

  OEDIPUS

  What, she its mother.

  HERDSMAN

  Fearing a dread weird.

  OEDIPUS

  What weird?

  HERDSMAN

  ’Twas told that he should slay his sire.

  OEDIPUS

  What didst thou give it then to this old man?

  HERDSMAN

  Through pity, master, for the babe. I thought

  He’d take it to the country whence he came;

  But he preserved it for the worst of woes.

  For if thou art in sooth what this man saith,

  God pity thee! thou wast to misery born.

  OEDIPUS

  Ah me! ah me! all brought to pass, all true!

  O light, may I behold thee nevermore!

  I stand a wretch, in birth, in wedlock cursed,

  A parricide, incestuously, triply cursed!

  [Exit OEDIPUS]

  CHORUS

  (Str. 1)

  Races of mortal man

  Whose life is but a span,

  I count ye but the shadow of a shade!

  For he who most doth know

  Of bliss, hath but the show;

  A moment, and the visions pale and fade.

  Thy fall, O Oedipus, thy piteous fall

  Warns me none born of women blest to call.

  (Ant. 1)

  For he of marksmen best,

  O Zeus, outshot the rest,

  And won the prize supreme of wealth and power.

  By him the vulture maid

  Was quelled, her witchery laid;

  He rose our savior and the land’s strong tower.

  We hailed thee king and from that day adored

  Of mighty Thebes the universal lord.

  (Str. 2)

  O heavy hand of fate!

  Who now more desolate,

  Whose tale more sad than thine, whose lot more dire?

  O Oedipus, discrowned head,

  Thy cradle was thy marriage bed;

  One harborage sufficed for son and sire.

  How could the soil thy father eared so long

  Endure to bear in silence such a wrong?

  (Ant. 2)

  All-seeing Time hath caught

  Guilt, and to justice brought

  The son and sire commingled in one bed.

  O child of Laius’ ill-starred race

  Would I had ne’er beheld thy face;

  I raise for thee a dirge as o’er the dead.

  Yet, sooth to say, through thee I drew new breath,

  And now through thee I feel a second death.

  [Enter SECOND MESSENGER.]

  SECOND MESSENGER

  Most grave and reverend senators of Thebes,

  What Deeds ye soon must hear, what sights behold

  How will ye mourn, if, true-born patriots,

  Ye reverence still the race of Labdacus!

  Not Ister nor all Phasis’ flood, I ween,

  Could wash away the blood-stains from this house,

  The ills it shrouds or soon will bring to light,

  Ills wrought of malice, not unwittingly.

  The worst to bear are self-inflicted wounds.

  CHORUS

  Grievous enough for all our tears and groans

  Our past calamities; what canst thou add?

  SECOND MESSENGER

  My tale is quickly told and quickly heard.

  Our sovereign lady queen Jocasta’s dead.

  CHORUS

  Alas, poor queen! how came she by her death?

  SECOND MESSENGER

  By her own hand. And all the horror of it,

  Not having seen, yet cannot comprehend.

  Nathless, as far as my poor memory serves,

  I will relate the unhappy lady’s woe.

  When in her frenzy she had passed inside

  The vestibule, she hurried straight to win

  The bridal-chamber, clutching at her hair

  With both her hands, and, once within the room,

  She shut the doors behind her with a crash.

  “Laius,” she cried, and called her husband dead

  Long, long ago; her thought was of that child

  By him begot, the son by whom the sire

  Was murdered and the mother left to breed

  With her own seed, a monstrous progeny.

  Then she bewailed the marriage bed whereon

  Poor wretch, she had conceived a double brood,

  Husband by husband, children by her child.

  What happened after that I cannot tell,

  Nor how the end befell, for with a shriek

  Burst on us Oedipus; all eyes were fixed

  On Oedipus, as up and down he strode,

  Nor could we mark her agony to the end.

  For stalking to and fro “A sword!” he cried,

  “Where is the wife, no wife, the teeming womb

  That bore a double harvest, me and mine?”

  And in his frenzy some supernal power

  (No mortal, surely, none of us who watched him)

  Guided his footsteps; with a terrible shriek,

  As though one beckoned him, he crashed against

  The folding doors, and from their staples forced

  The wrenched bolts and hurled himself within.

  Then we beheld the woman hanging there,

  A running noose entwined about her neck.

  But when he saw her, with a maddened roar

  He loosed the cord; and when her wretched corpse

  Lay stretched on earth, what followed — O ’twas dread!

  He tore the golden brooches that upheld

  Her queenly robes, upraised them high and smote

  Full on his eye-balls, uttering words like these:

  “No more shall ye behold such sights of woe,

  Deeds I have suffered and myself have wrought;

  Henceforward quenched in darkness shall ye see

  Those ye should ne’er have seen; now blind to those

  Whom, when I saw, I vainly yearned to know.”

  Such was the burden of his moan, whereto,

  Not once but oft, he struck with his hand uplift

  His eyes, and at each stroke the ensanguined orbs

  Bedewed his beard, not oozing drop by dr
op,

  But one black gory downpour, thick as hail.

  Such evils, issuing from the double source,

  Have whelmed them both, confounding man and wife.

  Till now the storied fortune of this house

  Was fortunate indeed; but from this day

  Woe, lamentation, ruin, death, disgrace,

  All ills that can be named, all, all are theirs.

  CHORUS

  But hath he still no respite from his pain?

  SECOND MESSENGER

  He cries, “Unbar the doors and let all Thebes

  Behold the slayer of his sire, his mother’s—”

  That shameful word my lips may not repeat.

  He vows to fly self-banished from the land,

  Nor stay to bring upon his house the curse

  Himself had uttered; but he has no strength

  Nor one to guide him, and his torture’s more

  Than man can suffer, as yourselves will see.

  For lo, the palace portals are unbarred,

  And soon ye shall behold a sight so sad

  That he who must abhorred would pity it.

  [Enter OEDIPUS blinded.]

  CHORUS

  Woeful sight! more woeful none

  These sad eyes have looked upon.

  Whence this madness? None can tell

  Who did cast on thee his spell,

  prowling all thy life around,

  Leaping with a demon bound.

  Hapless wretch! how can I brook

  On thy misery to look?

  Though to gaze on thee I yearn,

  Much to question, much to learn,

  Horror-struck away I turn.

  OEDIPUS

  Ah me! ah woe is me!

  Ah whither am I borne!

  How like a ghost forlorn

  My voice flits from me on the air!

  On, on the demon goads. The end, ah where?

  CHORUS

  An end too dread to tell, too dark to see.

  OEDIPUS

  (Str. 1)

  Dark, dark! The horror of darkness, like a shroud,

  Wraps me and bears me on through mist and cloud.

  Ah me, ah me! What spasms athwart me shoot,

  What pangs of agonizing memory?

  CHORUS

  No marvel if in such a plight thou feel’st

  The double weight of past and present woes.

  OEDIPUS

  (Ant. 1)

  Ah friend, still loyal, constant still and kind,

  Thou carest for the blind.

  I know thee near, and though bereft of eyes,

  Thy voice I recognize.

  CHORUS

  O doer of dread deeds, how couldst thou mar

  Thy vision thus? What demon goaded thee?

  OEDIPUS

  (Str. 2)

  Apollo, friend, Apollo, he it was

  That brought these ills to pass;

  But the right hand that dealt the blow

  Was mine, none other. How,

  How, could I longer see when sight

  Brought no delight?

  CHORUS

  Alas! ’tis as thou sayest.

  OEDIPUS

  Say, friends, can any look or voice

  Or touch of love henceforth my heart rejoice?