E’er since we knew thee who thou art, we mourn
Exceedingly with cries that rend the sky.
For, to tell truth, thou didst restore our life
And gavest our soul sweet respite after strife.
Enter Messenger.
Mess. O ye who in this land have ever held
Chief honour, what an object of dire woe
Awaits your eyes, your ears! What piercing grief
Your hearts must suffer, if as kinsmen should
Ye still regard the house of Laïus!
Not Phasis, nor the Danube’s rolling flood,
Can ever wash away the stain and purge
This mansion of the horror that it hides.
—And more it soon shall give to light, not now
Unconsciously enacted. Of all ill,
Self-chosen sorrows are the worst to bear.
Ch. What hast thou new to add? the weight of grief
From that we know burdens the heart enough.
Mess. Soon spoken and soon heard is the chief sum.
Jocasta’s royal head is sunk in death.
Ch. The hapless queen! What was the fatal cause?
Mess. Her own determination. You are spared
The worst affliction, not being there to see.
Yet to the height of my poor memory’s power
The wretched lady’s passion you shall hear.
When she had passed in her hot mood within
The vestibule, straight to the bridal room
She rushes, tearing with both hands her hair.
Then having entered, shutting fast the door,
She called aloud on Laïus, long dead,
With anguished memory of that birth of old
Whereby the father fell, leaving his queen
To breed a dreadful brood for his own son.
And loudly o’er the bed she wailed, where she,
In twofold wedlock, hapless, had brought forth
Husband from husband, children from a child.
We could not know the moment of her death,
Which followed soon, for Oedipus with cries
Broke in, and would not let us see her end,
