pplause:
But oh, my children! oh, what have they done?
This was not like the mercy of the heavens,
To set her madness on such cruelty:
This stirs me more than all my sufferings,
And with my last breath I must call you tyrants.

_Haem._ What mean you, sir?

_OEdip._ Jocasta! lo, I come.
O Laius, Labdacus, and all you spirits
Of the Cadmean race, prepare to meet me,
All weeping ranged along the gloomy shore;
Extend your arms to embrace me, for I come.
May all the gods, too, from their battlements,
Behold and wonder at a mortal's daring;
And, when I knock the goal of dreadful death,
Shout and applaud me with a clap of thunder.
Once more, thus winged by horrid fate, I come,
Swift as a falling meteor; lo, I fly,
And thus go downwards to the darker sky.
[_Thunder. He flings himself from the Window:
The Thebans gather about his Body._

_Haem._ O prophet, OEdipus is now no more!
O cursed effect of the most deep despair!

_Tir._ Cease your complaints, and bear his body hence;
The dreadful sight will daunt the drooping Thebans,
Whom heaven decrees to raise with peace and glory.
Yet, by these terrible examples warned,
The sacred Fury thus alarms the world:--
Let none, though ne'er so virtuous, great, and high,
Be judged entirely blest before they die. [_Exeunt._

Footnotes:
1. Imitated from the commencement of the plague in the first book of
the _Iliad_.

2. The story of the Sphinx is generally known: She was a monster, who
delighted in putting a riddle to the Thebans, and slaying each poor
dull Boeotian, who could not interpret it. OEdipus guessed the
enigma, on which the monster destroyed herself for shame. Thus he
attained the throne of Thebes, and the bed of Jocasta.

3. To _dare a lark_, is to fly a hawk, or present some other object of
fear, to engage the bird's attention, and prevent it from taking
wing, while the fowler draws his net:

Farewell, nobility; let his grace go forward,
And dare us with his cap, like larks.
_Henry VIII._ Act III. Scene II.

4. The carelessness of OEdipus about the fate of his predecessor is
very unnatural; but to such expedients dramatists are often
reduced, to communicate to their audience what must have been known
to the persons of the drama.

5. _Start_ is here, and in p. 136, used for _started_, being borrowed
from _sterte_