By Creon’s counsel I have sent twice o’er
To fetch him, and I muse at his delay.
Ch. The rumour that remains is old and dim.
Oed. What rumour? Let no tale be left untried.
Ch. ’Twas said he perished by some wandering band.
Oed. But the one witness is removed from ken.
Ch. Well, if the man be capable of fear,
He’ll not remain when he hath heard thy curse.
Oed. Words have no terror for the soul that dares
Such doings.
Ch. Yet lives, one who shall convict him.
For look where now they lead the holy seer,
Whom sacred Truth inspires alone of men.
Enter Tiresias.
Oed. O thou whose universal thought commands
All knowledge and all mysteries, in Heaven
And on the earth beneath, thy mind perceives,
Tirésias, though thine outward eye be dark,
What plague is wasting Thebè, who in thee,
Great Sir, finds her one saviour, her sole guide.
Phoebus (albeit the messengers perchance
Have told thee this) upon our sending sent
This answer back, that no release might come
From this disaster, till we sought and found
And slew the murderers of king Laïus,
Or drave them exiles from our land. Thou, then,
Withhold not any word of augury
Or other divination which thou knowest,
But rescue Thebè, and thyself, and me,
And purge the stain that issues from the dead.
On thee we lean: and ’tis a noble thing
To use what power one hath in doing good.
Tiresias. Ah! terrible is knowledge to the man
Whom knowledge profits not. This well I knew,
But had forgotten. Else I ne’er had come.
Oed. Why dost thou bring a mind so full of gloom?
Ti. Let me go home. Thy part and mine to-day
Will best be borne, if thou obey me in that.
