Œdip. There's magic in it, take it from my sight;
There's not a beam it darts, but carries hell,
Hot flashing lust, and necromantic incest:
Take it from these sick eyes, oh hide it from me!—
No, my Jocasta, though Thebes cast me out,
While Merope's alive, I'll ne'er return.
O, rather let me walk round the wide world
A beggar, than accept a diadem
On such abhorred conditions.
Joc. You make, my lord, your own unhappiness,
By these extravagant and needless fears.
Œdip. Needless! O, all you Gods! By heaven, I would rather
Embrue my arms, up to my very shoulders,
In the dear entrails of the best of fathers,
Than offer at the execrable act
Of damned incest: therefore no more of her.
Æge. And why, O sacred sir, if subjects may
Presume to look into their monarch's breast,
Why should the chaste and spotless Merope
Infuse such thoughts, as I must blush to name?
Œdip. Because the god of Delphos did forewarn me,
With thundering oracles.
Æge. May I entreat to know them?
Œdip. Yes, my Ægeon; but the sad remembrance
196 Quite blasts my soul: See then the swelling priest!
Methinks, I have his image now in view!—
He mounts the tripos in a minute's space,
His clouded head knocks at the temple-roof;
While from his mouth,
These dismal words are heard:
"Fly, wretch, whom fate has doomed thy father's blood to spill,
And with preposterous births thy mother's womb to fill!"
Æge. Is this the cause,
Why you refuse the diadem of Corinth?
Œdip. The cause! why, is it not a monstrous one!
Æge. Great sir, you may return; and though you should
Enjoy the queen, (which all the Gods forbid!)
The act would prove no incest.