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The Chorus

Prudence is on the other side; but deeds
Condemn’d by prudence have sometimes gone well.

Merope

Not till the ways of prudence all are tried,
And tried in vain, the turn of rashness comes.
Thou leapest to thy deed, and hast not ask’d
Thy kinsfolk and thy father’s friends for aid.

AEpytus

And to what friends should I for aid apply?

Merope

The royal race of Temenus, in Argos—-

AEpytus

That house, like ours, intestine murder maims.

Merope

Thy Spartan cousins, Procles and his brother—-

AEpytus

Love a won cause, but not a cause to win.

Merope

My father, then, and his Arcadian chiefs—-

AEpytus

Mean still to keep aloof from Dorian broil.

Merope

Wait, then, until sufficient help appears.

AEpytus

Orestes in Mycenae had no more.

Merope

He to fulfil an order raised his hand.

AEpytus

What order more precise had he than I?

Merope

Apollo peal’d it from his Delphian cave.

AEpytus

A mother’s murder needed hest divine.

Merope

He had a hest, at least, and thou hast none.

AEpytus

The Gods command not where the heart speaks clear.

Merope

Thou wilt destroy, I see, thyself and us.

AEpytus

O suffering! O calamity! how ten,
How twentyfold worse are ye, when your blows
Not only wound the sense, but kill the soul,
The noble thought, which is alone the man!
That I, to-day returning, find myself
Orphan’d of both my parents–by his foes
My father, by your strokes my mother slain!
For this is not my mother, who dissuades,
At the dread altar of her husband’s tomb,
His son from vengeance on his murderer;
And not alone dissuades him, but compares
His just revenge to an unnatural deed,
A deed so awful, that the general tongue
Fluent of horrors, falters to relate it–
Of darkness so tremendous, that its author,
Though to his act empower’d, nay, impell’d,
By the oracular sentence of the Gods,
Fled, for years after, o’er the face of earth,
A frenzied wanderer, a God-driven man,
And hardly yet, some say, hath found a grave–
With such a deed as this thou matchest mine,
Which Nature sanctions, which the innocent blood
Clamours to find fulfill’d, which good men praise,
And only bad men joy to see undone!
O honour’d father! hide thee in thy grave
Deep as thou canst, for hence no succour comes;
Since from thy faithful subjects what revenge
Canst thou expect, when thus thy widow fails?
Alas! an adamantine strength indeed,
Past expectation, hath thy murderer built;
For this is the true strength of guilty kings,
When they corrupt the souls of those they rule.

The Chorus

Zeal makes him most unjust; but, in good time,
Here, as I guess, the noble Laias comes.

Laias

Break off, break off your talking, and depart
Each to his post, where the occasion calls;
Lest from the council-chamber presently
The King return, and find you prating here.
A time will come for greetings; but to-day
The hour for words is gone, is come for deeds.

AEpytus

O princely Laias! to what purpose calls
The occasion, if our chief confederate fails?
My mother stands aloof, and blames our deed.

Laias

My royal sister?… but, without some cause,
I know, she honours not the dead so ill.

Merope

Brother, it seems thy sister must present,
At this first meeting after absence long,
Not welcome, exculpation to her kin;
Yet exculpation needs it, if I seek,
A woman and a mother, to avert
Risk from my new-restored, my only son?–
Sometimes, when he was gone, I wish’d him back,
Risk what he might; now that I have him here,
Now that I feed mine eyes on that young face,
Hear that fresh voice, and clasp that gold-lock’d head,
I shudder, Laias, to commit my child
To murder’s dread arena, where I saw
His father and his ill-starr’d brethren fall!
I loathe for him the slippery way of blood;
I ask if bloodless means may gain his end.
In me the fever of revengeful hate,
Passion’s first furious longing to imbrue
Our own right hand in the detested blood
Of enemies, and count their dying groans–
If in this feeble bosom such a fire
Did ever burn–is long by time allay’d,
And I would now have Justice strike, not me.
Besides–for from my brother and my son
I hide not even this–the reverence deep,
Remorseful, tow’rd my hostile solitude,
By Polyphontes never fail’d-in once
Through twenty years; his mournful anxious zeal
To efface in me the memory of his crime–
Though it efface not that, yet makes me wish
His death a public, not a personal act,
Treacherously plotted ‘twixt my son and me;
To whom this day he came to proffer peace,
Treaty, and to this kingdom for my son
Heirship, with fair intent, as I believe.–
For that he plots thy death, account it false;