Leader.
Unhappy woman! How came death to her?
Messenger.
By her own hand. . . . Oh, of what passed in there
Ye have been spared the worst. Ye cannot see.
Howbeit, with that which still is left in me
Of mind and memory, ye shall hear her fate.
Like one entranced with passion, through the gate
She passed, the white hands flashing o’er her head,
Like blades that tear, and fled, unswerving fled,
Toward her old bridal room, and disappeared
And the doors crashed behind her. But we heard
Her voice within, crying to him of old,
Her Laïus, long dead; and things untold
Of the old kiss unforgotten, that should bring
The lover’s death and leave the loved a thing
Of horror, yea, a field beneath the plough
For sire and son: then wailing bitter-low
Across that bed of births unreconciled,
Husband from husband born and child from child.
And, after that, I know not how her death
Found her. For sudden, with a roar of wrath,
Burst Oedipus upon us. Then, I ween,
We marked no more what passion held the Queen,
But him, as in the fury of his stride,
“A sword! A sword! And show me here,” he cried,
“That wife, no wife, that field of bloodstained earth
Where husband, father, sin on sin, had birth,
Polluted generations!” While he thus
Raged on, some god—for sure ’twas none of us—
Showed where she was; and with a shout away,
As though some hand had pointed to the prey,
74
