Sophocles Oedipus Trilogy | Page 4

Thebes. Before the Palace of Oedipus.

OEDIPUS THE KING
Suppliants of all ages are seated round the altar at the palace doors, at
their head a PRIEST OF ZEUS. To them enter OEDIPUS.
OEDIPUS
My children, latest born to Cadmus old,
Why sit ye here
as suppliants, in your hands
Branches of olive filleted with wool?

What means this reek of incense everywhere,
And everywhere
laments and litanies?
Children, it were not meet that I should learn

From others, and am hither come, myself,
I Oedipus, your
world-renowned king.
Ho! aged sire, whose venerable locks

Proclaim thee spokesman of this company,
Explain your mood and
purport. Is it dread
Of ill that moves you or a boon ye crave?
My
zeal in your behalf ye cannot doubt;
Ruthless indeed were I and

obdurate
If such petitioners as you I spurned.
PRIEST
Yea, Oedipus, my sovereign lord and king,
Thou seest
how both extremes of age besiege
Thy palace altars--fledglings
hardly winged,
and greybeards bowed with years; priests, as am I
of
Zeus, and these the flower of our youth.
Meanwhile, the common
folk, with wreathed boughs
Crowd our two market-places, or before

Both shrines of Pallas congregate, or where
Ismenus gives his
oracles by fire.
For, as thou seest thyself, our ship of State,
Sore
buffeted, can no more lift her head,
Foundered beneath a weltering
surge of blood.
A blight is on our harvest in the ear,
A blight upon
the grazing flocks and herds,
A blight on wives in travail; and withal

Armed with his blazing torch the God of Plague
Hath swooped
upon our city emptying
The house of Cadmus, and the murky realm

Of Pluto is full fed with groans and tears.
Therefore, O King, here at thy hearth we sit,
I and these children; not
as deeming thee
A new divinity, but the first of men;
First in the
common accidents of life,
And first in visitations of the Gods.
Art
thou not he who coming to the town
of Cadmus freed us from the tax
we paid
To the fell songstress? Nor hadst thou received
Prompting
from us or been by others schooled;
No, by a god inspired (so all men
deem,
And testify) didst thou renew our life.
And now, O Oedipus,
our peerless king,
All we thy votaries beseech thee, find
Some
succor, whether by a voice from heaven
Whispered, or haply known
by human wit.
Tried counselors, methinks, are aptest found [1]
To
furnish for the future pregnant rede.
Upraise, O chief of men, upraise
our State!
Look to thy laurels! for thy zeal of yore
Our country's
savior thou art justly hailed:
O never may we thus record thy reign:--

"He raised us up only to cast us down."
Uplift us, build our city on
a rock.
Thy happy star ascendant brought us luck,
O let it not
decline! If thou wouldst rule
This land, as now thou reignest, better
sure
To rule a peopled than a desert realm.
Nor battlements nor

galleys aught avail,
If men to man and guards to guard them tail.
OEDIPUS
Ah! my poor children, known, ah, known too well,
The
quest that brings you hither and your need.
Ye sicken all, well wot I,
yet my pain,
How great soever yours, outtops it all.
Your sorrow
touches each man severally,
Him and none other, but I grieve at once

Both for the general and myself and you.
Therefore ye rouse no
sluggard from day-dreams.
Many, my children, are the tears I've wept,

And threaded many a maze of weary thought.
Thus pondering one
clue of hope I caught,
And tracked it up; I have sent Menoeceus' son,

Creon, my consort's brother, to inquire
Of Pythian Phoebus at his
Delphic shrine,
How I might save the State by act or word.
And
now I reckon up the tale of days
Since he set forth, and marvel how
he fares.
'Tis strange, this endless tarrying, passing strange.
But
when he comes, then I were base indeed,
If I perform not all the god
declares.
PRIEST
Thy words are well timed; even as thou speakest
That
shouting tells me Creon is at hand.
OEDIPUS
O King Apollo! may his joyous looks
Be presage of the
joyous news he brings!
PRIEST
As I surmise, 'tis welcome; else his head
Had scarce been
crowned with berry-laden bays.
OEDIPUS
We soon shall know; he's now in earshot range.
[Enter
CREON]
My royal cousin, say, Menoeceus' child,
What message
hast thou brought us from the god?
CREON
Good news, for e'en intolerable ills,
Finding right issue,
tend to naught but good.
OEDIPUS
How runs the oracle? thus far thy words
Give me no
ground for confidence or fear.

CREON
If thou wouldst hear my message publicly,
I'll tell thee
straight, or with thee pass within.
OEDIPUS
Speak before all; the burden that I bear
Is more for these
my subjects than myself.
CREON
Let me report then all the god declared.
King Phoebus
bids us straitly extirpate
A fell pollution that infests the land,
And
no more harbor an inveterate sore.
OEDIPUS
What expiation means he? What's amiss?
CREON
Banishment, or the shedding blood for blood.
This stain of
blood makes shipwreck of our state.
OEDIPUS
Whom can he mean, the miscreant thus denounced?
CREON
Before thou didst assume the helm of State,
The sovereign
of this land was Laius.
OEDIPUS
I heard as much, but never saw the man.
CREON
He fell; and now