this, is able to perform it.

OED. Came this device from Creon or thyself?

TI. Not Creon: thou art thy sole enemy.

OED. O wealth and sovereign power and high success
Attained through wisdom and admired of men,
What boundless jealousies environ you!
When for this rule, which to my hand the State
Committed unsolicited and free,
Creon, my first of friends, trusted and sure,
Would undermine and hurl me from my throne,
Meanly suborning such a mendicant
Botcher of lies, this crafty wizard rogue,
Blind in his art, and seeing but for gain.
Where are the proofs of thy prophetic power?
How came it, when the minstrel-hound was here,
This folk had no deliverance through thy word?
Her snare could not be loosed by common wit,
But needed divination and deep skill;
No sign whereof proceeded forth from thee
Procured through birds or given by God, till I,
The unknowing traveller, overmastered her,
The stranger Oedipus, not led by birds,
But ravelling out the secret by my thought:
Whom now you study to supplant, and trust
To stand as a supporter of the throne
Of lordly Creon,--To your bitter pain
Thou and the man who plotted this will hunt
Pollution forth[2].--But for thy reverend look
Thou hadst atoned thy trespass on the spot.

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