Dioc. While Laius has a lawful successor,
Your first oath still must bind: Eurydice
Is heir to Laius; let her marry Creon.
Offended heaven will never be appeased,
While Œdipus pollutes the throne of Laius,
A stranger to his blood.
All. We'll no Œdipus, no Œdipus.
1 Cit. He puts the prophet in a mouse-hole.
2 Cit. I knew it would be so; the last man ever speaks the best reason.
Tir. Can benefits thus die, ungrateful Thebans!
Remember yet, when, after Laius' death,
The monster Sphinx laid your rich country waste,
Your vineyards spoiled, your labouring oxen slew,
Yourselves for fear mewed up within your walls;
She, taller than your gates, o'er-looked your town;
But when she raised her bulk to sail above you,
She drove the air around her like a whirlwind,
And shaded all beneath; till, stooping down,
142 She clap'd her leathern wing against your towers,
And thrust out her long neck, even to your doors[2].
Dioc. Alc. Pyr. We'll hear no more.
Tir. You durst not meet in temples,
To invoke the gods for aid; the proudest he,
Who leads you now, then cowered, like a dared[3] lark:
This Creon shook for fear,
The blood of Laius curdled in his veins,
'Till Œdipus arrived.
Called by his own high courage and the gods,
Himself to you a god, ye offered him
Your queen and crown; (but what was then your crown!)
And heaven authorized it by his success.
Speak then, who is your lawful king?
All. 'Tis Œdipus.
Tir. 'Tis Œdipus indeed: Your king more lawful
Than yet you dream; for something still there lies
In heaven's dark volume, which I read through mists:
'Tis great, prodigious; 'tis a dreadful birth,
Of wondrous fate; and now, just now disclosing.
I see, I see! how terrible it dawns,
And my soul sickens with it!
1 Cit. How the god shakes him!