Tiresias (turning again as he goes).

I fear thee not; nor will I go before

That word be spoken which I came to speak.

How canst thou ever touch me?—Thou dost seek

With threats and loud proclaim the man whose hand

Slew Laïus. Lo, I tell thee, he doth stand

Here. He is called a stranger, but these days

Shall prove him Theban true, nor shall he praise

His birthright. Blind, who once had seeing eyes,

Beggared, who once had riches, in strange guise,

His staff groping before him, he shall crawl

O’er unknown earth, and voices round him call:

“Behold the brother-father of his own

Children, the seed, the sower and the sown,

Shame to his mother’s blood, and to his sire

Son, murderer, incest-worker.”

Cool thine ire

With thought of these, and if thou find that aught

Faileth, then hold my craft a thing of naught.

[He goes out. Oedipus returns to the Palace.

Chorus.

[They sing of the unknown murderer,

What man, what man is he whom the voice of Delphi’s cell

Hath named of the bloody hand, of the deed no tongue may tell?

Let him fly, fly, for his need

Hath found him; oh, where is the speed

That flew with the winds of old, the team of North-Wind’s spell?

For feet there be that follow. Yea, thunder-shod

And girt with fire he cometh, the Child of God;

And with him are they that fail not, the Sin-Hounds risen from Hell.

For the mountain hath spoken, a voice hath flashed from amid the snows,

That the wrath of the world go seek for the man whom no man knows.

Is he fled to the wild forest,

To caves where the eagles nest?

O angry bull of the rocks, cast out from thy herd- fellows

Rage in his heart, and rage across his way,

He toileth ever to beat from his ears away

The word that floateth about him, living, where’er he goes.

[And of the Prophet’s strange accusation.

Yet strange, passing strange, the wise augur and his lore;

And my heart it cannot speak; I deny not nor assent,

But float, float in wonder at things after and before;

Did there lie between their houses some old wrath unspent,

That Corinth against Cadmus should do murder by the way?

No tale thereof they tell, nor no sign thereof they show;

Who dares to rise for vengeance and cast Oedipus away

For a dark, dark death long ago!

Ah, Zeus knows, and Apollo, what is dark to mortal eyes;

They are Gods. But a prophet, hath he vision more than mine?

Who hath seen? Who can answer? There be wise men and unwise.

I will wait, I will wait, for the proving of the sign.

But I list not nor hearken when they speak Oedipus ill.

We saw his face of yore, when the riddling singer passed;

And we knew him that he loved us, and we saw him great in skill.

Oh, my heart shall uphold him to the last!

Enter Creon.

Creon.

Good brother citizens, a frantic word

I hear is spoken by our chosen Lord

Oedipus against me, and here am come

Indignant. If he dreams, ’mid all this doom

That weighs upon us, he hath had from me

Or deed or lightest thought of injury, …

’Fore God, I have no care to see the sun

Longer with such a groaning name. Not one

Wound is it, but a multitude, if now

All Thebes must hold me guilty—aye, and thou

And all who loved me—of a deed so foul.

Leader.

If words were spoken, it was scarce the soul

That spoke them: ’twas some sudden burst of wrath.

Creon.⁵

The charge was made, then, that Tiresias hath

Made answer false, and that I bribed him, I?

Leader.

It was—perchance for jest. I know not why.

Creon.

His heart beat true, his eyes looked steadily

And fell not, laying such a charge on me?

Leader.

I know not. I have no eyes for the thing

My masters do.—But see, here comes the King.

Enter Oedipus from the Palace.