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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
The shock of his own curse on his own hall.
Meanwhile he needs some comfort and some guide,
For such a load of misery who can bear?
Thyself shalt judge: for, lo, the palace-gates
Unfold, and presently thine eyes will see
A hateful sight, yet one thou needs must pity.

[Enter OEDIPUS, blind and unattended.]

LEADER OF CH.
O horror of the world!
Too great for mortal eye!
More terrible than all I have known of ill!
What fury of wild thought
Came o’er thee? Who in heaven
Hath leapt against thy hapless life
With boundings out of measure fierce and huge?
Ah! wretched one, I cannot look on thee:
No, though I long to search, to ask, to learn.
Thine aspect is too horrible.–I cannot!

OED.
Me miserable! Whither am I borne?
Into what region are these wavering sounds
Wafted on aimless wings? O ruthless Fate!
To what a height thy fury hath soared!

CH.
Too far
For human sense to follow, or human thought
To endure the horror.

OED.
O dark cloud, descending
Unutterably on me! invincible,
Abhorred, borne onward by too sure a wind.
Woe, woe!
Woe! Yet again I voice it, with such pangs
Both from these piercing wounds I am assailed
And from within through memory of my grief.

CH.
Nay, ’tis no marvel if thy matchless woe
Redouble thine affliction and thy moan!

OED.
Ah! Friend, thou art still constant! Thou remainest
To tend me and to care for the blind man.
Alas!
I know thee well, nor fail I to perceive,
Dark though I be, thy kind familiar voice.

CH.
How dreadful is thy deed! How couldst thou bear
Thus to put out thine eyes? What Power impelled thee?

OED.
Apollo, dear my friends, Apollo brought to pass
In dreadful wise, this my calamitous woe.
But I,–no being else,–I with this hand destroyed them.

[Pointing to his eyes]

For why should I have sight,
To whom nought now gave pleasure through the eye?

CH.
There speak’st thou truly.

OED.
What could I see, whom hear
With gladness, whom delight in any more?
Lead me away out of the land with speed!
Be rid of the destroyer, the accursed,
Whom most of all the world the Gods abhor.

CH.
O miserable in thy calamity
And not less miserable in thy despair,
Would thou wert still in ignorance of thy birth!

OED.
My curse on him who from the cruel bond
That held my feet in that high pasture-land
Freed me, and rescued me from murder there,
And saved my life! Vain kindness! Then to have died
Had spared this agony to me and mine.

CH.
Ay, would it had been so!

OED.
Then had I ne’er
Been proved a parricide, ne’er borne the shame
Of marriage bonds incestuous! But now
I am God abandoned, Son of the unholy,
Rival of him who gave me being. Ah woe!
What sorrow beyond sorrows hath chief place?
That sorrow Oedipus must bear!