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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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And who hath told thee what thou tell'st me, child? ISMENE Envoys who visited the Delphic hearth. OEDIPUS Hath Phoebus spoken thus concerning me? ISMENE So say the envoys who returned to Thebes. OEDIPUS And can a son of mine have heard of this? ISMENE Yea, both alike, and know its import well. OEDIPUS They knew it, yet the ignoble greed of rule Outweighed all longing for their sire's return. ISMENE Grievous thy words, yet I must own them true. OEDIPUS Then may the gods ne'er quench their fatal feud, And mine be the arbitrament of the fight, For which they now are arming, spear to spear; That neither he who holds the scepter now May keep this throne, nor he who fled the realm Return again. _They_ never raised a hand, When I their sire was thrust from hearth and home, When I was banned and banished, what recked they? Say you 'twas done at my desire, a grace Which the state, yielding to my wish, allowed? Not so; for, mark you, on that very day When in the tempest of my soul I craved Death, even death by stoning, none appeared To further that wild longing, but anon, When time had numbed my anguish and I felt My wrath had all outrun those errors past, Then, then it was the city went about By force to oust me, respited for years; And then my sons, who should as sons have helped, Did nothing: and, one little word from them |
