Part 10 (1/2)
OEDIPUS Ah me! ah me! all brought to pa.s.s, 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 pa.s.sed 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-b.a.l.l.s, 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 drop, But one black gory downpour, thick as hail.