Page:Sophocles - Seven Plays, 1900.djvu/158

How, if I kept my sight, could I have looked
In Hades on my father’s countenance,
Or mine all-hapless mother, when, toward both,
I have done deeds no death can e’er atone?
Ah! but my children were a sight of joy;—
Offspring of such a marriage! were they so?
Never, to eyes of mine! nor town, nor tower,
Nor holy shrines o’ the gods, which I myself,
Dowered with the fairest life of Theban men,
Have forfeited, alas, by mine own law,
Declaring men should drive from every door
One marked by Heaven as impious and impure,
Nay worse, of Laius born! And was I then,
By mine own edict branded thus, to look
On Theban faces with unaltered eye?
Nay verily; but had there been a way
To stop the hearing-fountain through the ear,
I had not faltered, but had closed and barred
Each gate of this poor body; deaf and blind!
So thought might sweetly dwell at rest from ill.
Cithaeron! Why didst thou receive me? Why
Not slay me then and there? So had I not
Told to the world the horror of my birth.
O foster-home of Corinth and her king,
How bright the life ye cherished, filming o’er
What foulness far beneath! For I am vile,
And vile were both my parents. So ’tis proved.
O cross-road in the covert of the glen,
O thicket in the gorge where three ways met,
Bedewed by these my hands with mine own blood
From whence I sprang—have ye forgotten me?
Or doth some memory haunt you of the deeds
I did before you, and went on to do
Worse horrors here? O marriage twice accurst!
That gave me being, and then again sent forth
Fresh saplings springing from the selfsame seed,
To amaze men’s eyes and minds with dire confusion
Of father, brother, son, bride, mother, wife,
Murder of parents, and all shames that are!
Silence alone befits such deeds. Then, pray you,