MESSENGER.
By her own hand. That which is worst of all,
The sight of what was done, your eyes are spared;
But to your ears, so far as memory serves,
I will recount her most disastrous end.
When, in a storm of passion, hence she passed
To yonder house, straight to her marriage-bed,
Tearing her hair with both her hands, she flew.
She slammed the door behind her; then she cries
To Laius, that had long been in his grave,
Calling to mind the seed that they had raised
To murder its begetter, while his mate,
Was left to her own child's incestuous arms.
She cursed the bed which to a husband bore
A husband and gave children to a child.
Thereon she slew herself, I wot not how,
For, with loud outcries Oedipus rushed in,
And on his movements all our eyes were turned,
So that we could not mark Jocasta's end.
He, raving, shouted to us for a sword,
And asked where was his wife that was no wife,
But his own mother and his children's, too.
Then, in his frenzy, some mysterious power,
For it was none of us, showed him the way.
With a wild yell, as though one led him on,
He charged the doorway, from their sockets tore
The bolts, and headlong dashed into the room.
There we beheld Jocasta hanging dead,
Her neck entangled in the fatal noose.
This the King seeing, gave a fearful yell,
And loosed the rope; the corpse fell to the ground.
What then ensued was fearful to behold:
The golden buckles wherewith she was dight
He from her garment plucked, and, lifting them
On high, he smote the pupils of his eyes,
Crying aloud that they should look no more
Upon his suffering or his crimes, but dark
Henceforth betray their duty seeing those
Whom they ought not, not seeing those they ought.
Chanting this strain, once and again he smote,
With hand uplift, his eyeballs, till the blood
Ran from his wounded eyes down to his chin,
Not in slow-oozing drops of clotted gore,
But in a pelting shower of crimson hue.
Such is the wreck, not of a single life,
But of a husband's and a wife's in one.
The grandeur of this house in happier hours
Was grandeur worthy of the name. To-day
Sorrow and desolation, death and shame,
All evils for which man has names are here.
CHORUS.
Rests now the victim from this agony?
MESSENGER.
He calls to us to open wide the door
And let all Thebes behold the parricide.
His mother's—names too horrible he used,
Vowing he'll doom himself to banishment,
Nor live beneath the curse himself called down.
But some support and guidance he will need,
For he is stricken past man's strength to bear.
Thyself will see it, for behold, the gates
Open and will a spectacle disclose
That might the bitterest foe to pity move!
* * * * *
THE PARTING.
Oedipus bewails his calamities. A scene follows between him and Creon, his wife's brother, whom he had accused of treasonably plotting against him in concert with Tiresias.