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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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My case stands thus; by my own flesh and blood I was expelled my country, and can ne'er Thither return again, a parricide. THESEUS Why fetch thee home if thou must needs obey. THESEUS What are they threatened by the oracle? OEDIPUS Destruction that awaits them in this land. THESEUS What can beget ill blood 'twixt them and me? OEDIPUS Dear son of Aegeus, to the gods alone Is given immunity from eld and death; But nothing else escapes all-ruinous time. Earth's might decays, the might of men decays, Honor grows cold, dishonor flourishes, There is no constancy 'twixt friend and friend, Or city and city; be it soon or late, Sweet turns to bitter, hate once more to love. If now 'tis sunshine betwixt Thebes and thee And not a cloud, Time in his endless course Gives birth to endless days and nights, wherein The merest nothing shall suffice to cut With serried spears your bonds of amity. Then shall my slumbering and buried corpse In its cold grave drink their warm life-blood up, If Zeus be Zeus and Phoebus still speak true. No more: 'tis ill to tear aside the veil Of mysteries; let me cease as I began: Enough if thou wilt keep thy plighted troth, Then shall thou ne'er complain that OEDIPUS Proved an unprofitable and thankless guest, Except the gods themselves shall play me false. CHORUS The man, my lord, has from the very first Declared his power to offer to our land These and like benefits. |
