ho were they? Speak thy prophecies.

TIRESIAS.

This day shall give thee birth and blot thee out.

[Sidenote: vv. 439-455]

OEDIPUS.

Oh, riddles everywhere and words of doubt!

TIRESIAS.

Aye. Thou wast their best reader long ago.

OEDIPUS.

Laugh on. I swear thou still shalt find me so.

TIRESIAS.

That makes thy pride and thy calamity.

OEDIPUS.

I have saved this land, and care not if I die.

TIRESIAS.

Then I will go.--Give me thine arm, my child.

OEDIPUS.

Aye, help him quick.--To see him there makes wild
My heart. Once gone, he will not vex me more.

TIRESIAS (_turning again as he goes_).

I fear thee not; nor will I go before
That word be spoken which I came to speak.
How canst thou ever touch me?--Thou dost seek
With threats and loud proclaim the man whose hand
Slew Laius. Lo, I tell thee, he doth stand
Here. He is called a stranger, but these days
Shall prove him Theban true, nor shall he praise
His birthright. Blind, who once had seeing eyes,
Beggared, who once had riches, in strange guise,

[Sidenote: vv. 456-478]

His staff groping before him, he shall crawl
O'er unknown earth, and voices round him call:
"Behold the brother-father of his own
Children, the seed, the sower and the sown,
Shame to his mother's blood, and to his sire
Son, murderer, incest-worker."
Cool thine ire
With thought of these, and if thou find that aught
Faileth, then hold my craft a thing of naught.

[_He goes out._ OEDIPUS _returns to the Palace._

CHORUS.

[_They sing of the unknown murderer,_

What man, what man is he whom the voice of Delphi's cell
Hath named of the bloody hand, of the deed no tongue may tell?
Let him fly, fly, for his need
Hath found him; oh, where is the speed
That flew with the winds of old, the team of North-Wind's spell?
For feet there be that follow. Yea, thunder-shod
And girt with fire he cometh, the Child of God;
And with him are they that fail not, the Sin-Hounds risen from Hell.

For the mountain hath spoken, a voice hath flashed from amid the snows,
That the wrath of the world go seek for the man whom no man knows.
Is he fled to the wild forest,
To caves where the eagles nest?
O angry bull of the rocks, cast out from thy herd-fellows!

[Sidenote: vv. 479-512]

Rage in his heart, and rage across his way,
H