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CH.
Your friends would humbly deprecate the wrath
That sounds both in your speech, my lord, and his.
That is not what we need, but to discern
How best to solve the heavenly oracle.

TI.
Though thou art king and lord, I claim no less
Lordly prerogative to answer thee.
Speech is my realm; Apollo rules my life,
Not thou. Nor need I Creon to protect me.
Now, then: my blindness moves thy scorn:–thou hast
Thy sight, and seest not where thou art sunk in evil,
What halls thou dost inhabit, or with whom:
Know’st not from whence thou art–nay, to thy kin,
Buried in death and here above the ground,
Unwittingly art a most grievous foe.
And when thy father’s and thy mother’s curse
With fearful tread shall drive thee from the land,
On both sides lashing thee,–thine eye so clear
Beholding darkness in that day,–oh, then,
What region will not shudder at thy cry?
What echo in all Cithaeron will be mute,
When thou perceiv’st, what bride-song in thy hall
Wafted thy gallant bark with nattering gale
To anchor,–where? And other store of ill
Thou seest not, that shall show thee as thou art,
Merged with thy children in one horror of birth.
Then rail at noble Creon, and contemn
My sacred utterance! No life on earth
More vilely shall be rooted out, than thine.

OED.
Must I endure such words from him? Begone!
Off to thy ruin, and with speed! Away,
And take thy presence from our palace-hall!

TI.
Had you not sent for me, I ne’er had come.

OED.
I knew not thou wouldst utter folly here,
Else never had I brought thee to my door.

TI.
To thee I am foolish, then; but to the pair
Who gave thee life, I was wise.

OED.
Hold, go not! who?
Who gave me being?

TI.
To-day shall bring to light
Thy birth and thy destruction.

OED.
Wilt thou still
Speak all in riddles and dark sentences?

TI.
Methought thou wert the man to find them out.

OED.
Ay! Taunt me with the gift that makes me great.

TI.
And yet this luck hath been thy overthrow.

OED.
I care not, since I rescued this fair town.

TI.
Then I will go. Come, sirrah, guide me forth!

OED.
Be it so! For standing here you vex our eye,
But, you being gone, our trouble goes with you.

TI.
I go, but I will speak. Why should I fear
Thy frown? Thou ne’er canst ruin me. The word
Wherefore I came, is this: The man you seek
With threatening proclamation of the guilt
Of Laius’ blood, that man is here to-day,
An alien sojourner supposed from far,
But by-and-by he shall be certified
A true-born Theban: nor will such event
Bring him great joy; for, blind from having sight
And beggared from high fortune, with a staff
In stranger lands he shall feel forth his way;
Shown living with the children of his loins,
Their brother and their sire, and to the womb
That bare him, husband-son, and, to his father,
Parricide and corrival. Now go in,
Ponder my words; and if thou find them false,
then say my power is naught in prophecy.