HKB
OEDIPUS. Thou shalt rue it Twice to repeat so gross a calumny.
TEIRESIAS. Must I say more to aggravate thy rage?
OEDIPUS. Say all thou wilt; it will be but waste of breath.
TEIRESIAS. I say thou livest with thy nearest kin In infamy, unwitting in thy shame.
OEDIPUS. Think’st thou for aye unscathed to wag thy tongue?
TEIRESIAS. Yea, if the might of truth can aught prevail.
OEDIPUS. With other men, but not with thee, for thou In ear, wit, eye, in everything art blind.
TEIRESIAS. Poor fool to utter gibes at me which all Here present will cast back on thee ere long.
OEDIPUS. Offspring of endless Night, thou hast no power O’er me or any man who sees the sun.
TEIRESIAS. No, for thy weird is not to fall by me. I leave to Apollo what concerns the god.
OEDIPUS. Is this a plot of Creon, or thine own?
TEIRESIAS. Not Creon, thou thyself art thine own bane.
OEDIPUS. O wealth and empiry and skill by skill Outwitted in the battlefield of life, What spite and envy follow in your train! See, for this crown the State conferred on me. A gift, a thing I sought not, for this crown The trusty Creon, my familiar friend, Hath lain in wait to oust me and suborned This mountebank, this juggling charlatan, This tricksy beggar-priest, for gain alone Keen-eyed, but in his proper art stone-blind. Say, sirrah, hast thou ever proved thyself A prophet? When the riddling Sphinx was here Why hadst thou no deliverance for this folk? And yet the riddle was not to be solved By guess-work but required the prophet’s art; Wherein thou wast found lacking; neither birds Nor sign from heaven helped thee, but I came, The simple Oedipus; I stopped her mouth By mother wit, untaught of auguries. This is the man whom thou wouldst undermine, In hope to reign with Creon in my stead. Methinks that thou and thine abettor soon Will rue your plot to drive the scapegoat out. Thank thy grey hairs that thou hast still to learn What chastisement such arrogance deserves.
CHORUS. To us it seems that both the seer and thou, O Oedipus, have spoken angry words. This is no time to wrangle but consult How best we may fulfill the oracle.
TEIRESIAS. King as thou art, free speech at least is mine To make reply; in this I am thy peer. I own no lord but Loxias; him I serve And ne’er can stand enrolled as Creon’s man. Thus then I answer: since thou hast not spared To twit me with my blindness—thou hast eyes, Yet see’st not in what misery thou art fallen, Nor where thou dwellest nor with whom for mate. Dost know thy lineage? Nay, thou know’st it not, And all unwitting art a double foe To thine own kin, the living and the dead; Aye and the dogging curse of mother and sire One day shall drive thee, like a two-edged sword, Beyond our borders, and the eyes that now See clear shall henceforward endless night. Ah whither shall thy bitter cry not reach, What crag in all Cithaeron but shall then Reverberate thy wail, when thou hast found With what a hymeneal thou wast borne Home, but to no fair haven, on the gale! Aye, and a flood of ills thou guessest not Shall set thyself and children in one line. Flout then both Creon and my words, for none Of mortals shall be striken worse than thou.
OEDIPUS. Must I endure this fellow’s insolence? A murrain on thee! Get thee hence! Begone Avaunt! and never cross my threshold more.
TEIRESIAS. I ne’er had come hadst thou not bidden me.
OEDIPUS. I know not thou wouldst utter folly, else Long hadst thou waited to be summoned here.
TEIRESIAS. Such am I—as it seems to thee a fool, But to the parents who begat thee, wise.
OEDIPUS. What sayest thou—“parents”? Who begat me, speak?
TEIRESIAS. This day shall be thy birth-day, and thy grave.