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!
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