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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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Ye drank my blood, the life-blood these hands spilt, My father's; do ye call to mind perchance Those deeds of mine ye witnessed and the work I wrought thereafter when I came to Thebes? O fatal wedlock, thou didst give me birth, And, having borne me, sowed again my seed, Mingling the blood of fathers, brothers, children, Brides, wives and mothers, an incestuous brood, All horrors that are wrought beneath the sun, Horrors so foul to name them were unmeet. O, I adjure you, hide me anywhere Far from this land, or slay me straight, or cast me Down to the depths of ocean out of sight. Come hither, deign to touch an abject wretch; Draw near and fear not; I myself must bear The load of guilt that none but I can share. [Enter CREON.] CREON Lo, here is CREON, the one man to grant Thy prayer by action or advice, for he Is left the State's sole guardian in thy stead. OEDIPUS Ah me! what words to accost him can I find? What cause has he to trust me? In the past I have bee proved his rancorous enemy. CREON Not in derision, OEDIPUS, I come Nor to upbraid thee with thy past misdeeds. (To BYSTANDERS) But shame upon you! if ye feel no sense Of human decencies, at least revere The Sun whose light beholds and nurtures all. Leave not thus nakedly for all to gaze at A horror neither earth nor rain from heaven Nor light will suffer. Lead him straight within, For it is seemly that a kinsman's woes Be heard by kin and seen by kin alone. OEDIPUS O listen, since thy presence comes to me A shock of glad surprise--so noble thou, And I so vile--O grant me one small boon. |
