Gather the tribes of Cadmus hitherward;

Say, I will make clean work. Please Heaven, our state

Shall soon appear happy, or desperate.

PRIEST

Come children, let us rise; it was for this,

Which he himself proclaims, that we came hither.

Now may the sender of these oracles,

In saving and in plague-staying, Phoebus, come!

[Exeunt CREON, PRIEST and THEBANS.

OEDIPUS retires.

Enter THEBAN SENATORS, as Chorus.

Chorus.

I. 1.

O Prophecy of Jove, whose words are sweet,

With what doom art thou sent

To glorious Thebes, from Pytho’s gilded seat?

I am distraught with fearful wonderment,

I thrill with terror, and wait reverently—

Yea, Io Paean, Delian lord,* on thee!

What matter thou wilt compass—either strange,

Or once again recurrent as the seasons change,

Offspring of golden Hope, immortal Oracle,

Tell me, O tell!

I. 2.

Athena first I greet with invocation,

Daughter of Jove, divine!

Next Artemis thy sister, of this nation

Keeper, high seated in the encircling shrine,

Filled with her praises, of our market-place,

And Phoebus, shooting arrows far through space;

Appear ye Three, the averters of my fate!

If e’er before, when mischief rose upon the state,

Ye quenched the flames of evil, putting them away,

Come—come to-day!

II. 1.

Woe, for unnumbered are the ills we bear!

Sickness pervades our hosts;

Nor is there any spear of guardian care,

Wherewith a man might save us, found in all our coasts.

For all the fair soil’s produce now no longer springs;

Nor women from the labour and loud cries

Of their child-births arise;

And you may see, flying like a bird with wings,

One after one, outspeeding the resistless brand,

Pass—to the Evening Land.

II. 2.

In countless hosts our city perisheth.

Her children on the plain

Lie all unpitied—pitiless—breeding death.

Our wives meanwhile, and white-haired mother’s in their train,

This way and that, suppliant, along the altar-side

Sit, and bemoan their doleful maladies;

Like flame their paeans rise,

With wailing and lament accompanied;

For whose dear sake O Goddess, O Jove’s golden child,

Send Help with favour mild!

III. 1.

And Ares the Destroyer, him who thus—

Not now in harness of brass shields, as wont—

Ringed round with clamour, meets us front to front

And fevers us,

O banish from our country! Drive him back,

With winds upon his track,

On to the chamber vast of Amphitrite,*

Or that lone anchorage, the Thracian main;

For now, if night leave bounds to our annoy,

Day levels all again;

Wherefore, O father, Zeus, thou that dost wield the might

Of fire-fraught light,

Him with thy bolt destroy!

III. 2.

Next, from the bendings of thy golden string

I would see showered thy artillery

Invincible, marshalled to succour me,

Lycean King!**

Next, those flame-bearing beams, arrows most bright,

Which Artemis by night

Through Lycian highlands speeds her scattering;

Thou too, the Evian, with thy Maenad band,

Thou golden-braided patron of this land

Whose visage glows with wine,

O save us from the god whom no gods honour! Hear,