Classic Poem

" O IDIPOUS AT C OLONOS . "

Messenger , C HORUS .

Messenger . O citizens of Athens, to sum up
In fewest words what, to be told at large,
Would need an apter tongue than mine to tell —
King Oidipous —
Chorus. Is dead —
Messenger. I say not that;
From human eyes departed, I will say;
And with such circumstance as, could I tell
All that myself I saw, who saw not all —
Chorus. But, if not all, yet what you saw, recount.
Messenger. How the blind King, by what interior light
Guided himself we know not, guided us,
You that were present witness for yourselves;
And how with Theseus and the woeful Maid
Beside him, and some wondering few behind,
Straightforward, with unhesitating step,
That needed not his staff to feel the way,
Led on; till, reacht the threshold of the road
Which leads, they say, down to the nether world,
Beside the monumental stone that marks
Where our King Theseus and Peirithoos,
After long warfare, plighted hands of peace,
He stopt, sat down, his tattered raiment loosed,
And bade his daughter from the running brook
Bring him wherewith himself to purify.
Which she, resorting to the nearest field
Of Ceres, with what decent haste she might,
Returned, and washt him, and in raiment clean
Reclothed, as to the rite of Burial due.
And when all this was done, as for the Dead,
Weeping himself, he folded in his arms
His weeping child, and told her, from that hour,
She that so long had suffered for his sake,
With but the love between them to requite,
The face of him she loved must see no more.
And so they wept together for a while,
Together folded in each other's arms,
And all was silent else; when suddenly,
A thunder-speaking voice, as from the jaws
Of earth that yawned beneath us, called aloud:
" H O ! T HOU THERE ! W HY SO LONG A-COMING ? C OME ! "
Then Oidipous, who knew the word, and whence,
Relaxt his folding arms, and, rising up,
Took Theseus' hand, and, in it laying hers,
Besought him never to desert the child,
Nor yield her up to any against her will,
But be to her the Father whom she lost.
To which King Theseus having pledged his word,
The other, folding in one last embrace,
With one last kiss, his daughter to his heart,
Bade her return with us and never once
Look back on what was not for any one
But for King Theseus and himself to know.
Which said, and all in awful wonder husht,
The weeping Daughter turned away with us,
Slowly, like those who leave a funeral pyre,
With us our way re-tracing; until I,
Seized with a longing I could not control,
Despite the word yet ringing in my ears,
Lookt back — and saw King Theseus standing there,
Stock-still, his hands before his eyes, like one
Smit with a sudden blaze: but Oidipous
There — anywhere — there was not — vanisht — gone —
But, whether by some flash from Heav'n despatched,
Or by His hand who thro the shattered Earth
Had summoned him in thunder, drawn below,
No living man but Theseus' self may know.

CHORUS.

Let not the Man by Man he deemed unblest,
Who, howsoever in the midnight gloom
Encompast of inexorable Doom
That shrouds him from his Zenith to the West,
Not till he sink below the Verge redeems
His unexpected Lustre in such beams
As reaching Heaven-aloft enshrine his Tomb.