[Antistrophe.

Straight his archery flew

To the heart of living; he knew

Joy and the fulness of power,

O Zeus, when the riddling breath

Was stayed and the Maid of Death

Slain, and we saw him through

The death-cloud, a tower!

For that he was called my king;

Yea, every precious thing

Wherewith men are honoured, down

We cast before him,

And great Thebes brought her crown

And kneeled to adore him.

[Strophe.

But now, what man’s story is such bitterness to speak?

What life hath Delusion so visited, and Pain,

And swiftness of Disaster?

O great King, our master,

How oped the one haven to the slayer and the slain?

And the furrows of thy father, did they turn not nor shriek,

Did they bear so long silent thy casting of the grain?

[Antistrophe.

’Tis Time, Time, desireless, hath shown thee what thou art;

The long monstrous mating, it is judged and all its race.

O child of him that sleepeth,

Thy land weepeth, weepeth,

Unfathered. … Would God, I had never seen thy face!

From thee in great peril fell peace upon my heart,

In thee mine eye clouded and the dark is come apace.

[A Messenger rushes out from the Palace.

Messenger.

O ye above this land in honour old

Exalted, what a tale shall ye be told,

What sights shall see, and tears of horror shed,

If still your hearts be true to them that led

Your sires! There runs no river, well I ween,

Not Phasis nor great Ister, shall wash clean

This house of all within that hideth—nay,

Nor all that creepeth forth to front the day,

Of purposed horror. And in misery

That woundeth most which men have willed to be.

Leader.

No lack there was in what we knew before

Of food for heaviness. What bring’st thou more?

Messenger.

One thing I bring thee first. … ’Tis quickly said.

Jocasta, our anointed queen, is dead.

Leader.

Unhappy woman! How came death to her?

Messenger.

By her own hand. … Oh, of what passed in there

Ye have been spared the worst. Ye cannot see.

Howbeit, with that which still is left in me

Of mind and memory, ye shall hear her fate.

Like one entranced with passion, through the gate

She passed, the white hands flashing o’er her head,

Like blades that tear, and fled, unswerving fled,

Toward her old bridal room, and disappeared

And the doors crashed behind her. But we heard

Her voice within, crying to him of old,

Her Laïus, long dead; and things untold

Of the old kiss unforgotten, that should bring

The lover’s death and leave the loved a thing

Of horror, yea, a field beneath the plough

For sire and son: then wailing bitter-low

Across that bed of births unreconciled,

Husband from husband born and child from child.

And, after that, I know not how her death

Found her. For sudden, with a roar of wrath,

Burst Oedipus upon us. Then, I ween,

We marked no more what passion held the Queen,

But him, as in the fury of his stride,

“A sword! A sword! And show me here,” he cried,

“That wife, no wife, that field of bloodstained earth

Where husband, father, sin on sin, had birth,

Polluted generations!” While he thus

Raged on, some god—for sure ’twas none of us—

Showed where she was; and with a shout away,

As though some hand had pointed to the prey,

He dashed him on the chamber door. The straight

Door-bar of oak, it bent beneath his weight,

Shook from its sockets free, and in he burst

To the dark chamber.

There we saw her first

Hanged, swinging from a noose, like a dead bird19

He fell back when he saw her. Then we heard

A miserable groan, and straight he found

And loosed the strangling knot, and on the ground

Laid her.—Ah, then the sight of horror came!

The pin of gold, broad- beaten like a flame,

He tore from off her breast, and, left and right,

Down on the shuddering orbits of his sight

Dashed it: “Out! Out! Ye never more shall see

Me nor the anguish nor the sins of me.

Ye looked on lives whose like earth never bore,

Ye knew not those my spirit thirsted for:

Therefore be dark for ever!”

Like a song

His voice rose, and again, again, the strong

And stabbing hand fell, and the massacred

And bleeding eyeballs streamed upon his beard,

Wild rain, and gouts of hail amid the rain.

Behold affliction, yea, afflictions twain

From man and woman broken, now made one

In downfall. All the riches yester sun

Saw in this house were rich in verity.

What call ye now our riches? Agony,

Delusion, Death, Shame, all that eye or ear

Hath ever dreamed of misery, is here.