But held our eyes as he careered the hall,
Demanding arms, and whore to find his wife,—
No, not his wife, but fatal mother-croft,
Cropped doubly with himself and his own seed.
And in his rage some god directed him
To find her:—’twas no man of us at hand.
Then with a fearful shout, as following
His leader, he assailed the folding-doors;
And battering inward from the mortised bolts
The bending boards, he burst into the room:
Where high suspended we beheld the queen,
In twisted cordage resolutely swung.
He all at once on seeing her, wretched king!
Undid the pendent noose, and on the ground
Lay the ill-starred queen. Oh, then ’twas terrible
To see what followed—for he tore away
The tiring-pins wherewith she was arrayed,
And, lifting, smote his eyeballs to the root,
Saying, Nevermore should they behold the evil
His life inherited from that past time,
But all in dark henceforth should look upon
Features far better not beheld, and fail
To recognize the souls he had longed to know.
Thus crying aloud, not once but oftentimes
He drave the points into his eyes; and soon
The bleeding pupils moistened all his beard,
Nor stinted the dark flood, but all at once
The ruddy hail poured down in plenteous shower.
Thus from two springs, from man and wife together,
Rose the joint evil that is now o’erflowing.
And the old happiness in that past day
Was truly happy, but the present hour
Hath pain, crime, ruin:—whatsoe’er of ill
Mankind have named, not one is absent here.
Ch. And finds the sufferer now some pause of woe?
Mess. He bids make wide the portal and display
To all the men of Thebes the man who slew
His father, who unto his mother did
What I dare not repeat, and fain would fling
His body from the land, nor calmly bide
