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CH.
Thy fear is ours, O king: yet lose not hope,
Till thou hast heard the witness of the deed.

OED.
Ay, that is all I still have left of hope,
To bide the coming of the shepherd man.

JO.
What eager thought attends his presence here?

OED.
I’ll tell thee. Should his speech accord with thine,
My life stands clear from this calamity.

JO.
What word of mine agreed not with the scene?

OED.
You said he spake of robbers in a band
As having slain him. Now if he shall still
Persist in the same number, I am free.
One man and many cannot be the same.
But should he tell of one lone traveller,
Then, unavoidably, this falls on me.

JO.
So ’twas given out by him, be sure of that.
He cannot take it back. Not I alone
But all the people heard him speak it so.
And should he swerve in aught from his first tale,
He ne’er can show the murder of the king
Rightly accordant with the oracle.
For Phoebus said expressly he should fall
Through him whom I brought forth. But that poor babe
Ne’er slew his sire, but perished long before.
Wherefore henceforth I will pursue my way
Regardless of all words of prophecy.

OED.
Wisely resolved. But still send one to bring
The labourer swain, and be not slack in this.

JO.
I will, and promptly. Go we now within!
My whole desire is but to work thy will.

[Exeunt]

CHORUS
O may my life be evermore
Pure in each holy word and deed
By those eternal laws decreed
That pace the sapphire-paven floor!
Children of Heaven, of Ether born,
No mortal knew their natal morn,
Nor may Oblivion’s waters deep
E’er lull their wakeful spirit asleep,
Nor creeping Age o’erpower the mighty God
Who far within them holds his unprofaned abode.

Pride breeds the tyrant: monstrous birth!
Insolent Pride, if idly nursed
On timeless surfeit, plenty accursed,
Spurning the lowlier tract of Earth
Mounts to her pinnacle,–then falls,
Dashed headlong down sheer mountain walls
To dark Necessity’s deep ground,
Where never foothold can be found.
Let wrestlers for my country’s glory speed,
God, I thee pray! Be God my helper in all need!

But if one be, whose bold disdain
Walks in a round of vapourings vain
And violent acts, regarding not
The Rule of Right, but with proud thought
Scorning the place where Gods have set their seat,
–Made captive by an Evil Doom,
Shorn of that inauspicious bloom,
Let him be shown the path of lawful gain
And taught in holier ways to guide his feet,
Nor with mad folly strain
His passionate arms to clasp things impious to retain.
Who in such courses shall defend his soul
From storms of thundrous wrath that o’er him roll?
If honour to such lives be given,
What needs our choir to hymn the power of Heaven?

No more to Delphi, central shrine
Of Earth, I’ll seek, for light divine,
Nor visit Abae’s mystic fane
Nor travel o’er the well-trod plain
Where thousands throng to famed Olympia’s town,
Unless, with manifest accord,
The event fulfil the oracular word.
Zeus, Lord of all! if to eternity
Thou would’st confirm thy kingdom’s large renown,
Let not their vauntings high
Evade the sovereign look of the everlasting eye!
They make as though the ancient warning slept
By Laius erst with fear and trembling kept;
Apollo’s glory groweth pale,
And holiest rites are prone to faint and fail.