If honour to such lives be given,
What needs our choir to hymn the power of Heaven?
No more to Delphi, central shrine II 2
Of Earth, I’ll seek, for light divine,
Nor visit Abac’s mystic fane
Nor travel o’er the well-trod plain
Where thousands throng to famed Olympia’s town,
Unless, with manifest accord,
The event fulfil the oracular word.
Zeus, Lord of all! if to eternity
Thou would’st confirm thy kingdom’s large renown,
Let not their vauntings high
Evade the sovereign look of the everlasting eye!
They make as though the ancient warning slept
By Laius erst with fear and trembling kept;
Apollo’s glory groweth pale,
And holiest rites are prone to faint and fail.
Enter Jocasta.
Jo. Princes cf Thebes, it came into my thought
To stand before some holy altar-place
With frankincense and garlands. For the king,
Transported by the tempest of his fear,
Runs wild in grief, nor like a man of sense
Reasons of present things from what hath been.
Each tongue o’ermasters him that tells of woe.
Then since my counsels are of no avail,
To thee, for thou art nearest, Lykian God,
I bring my supplication with full hand.
O grant us absolution and relief!
For seeing him, our pilot, so distraught,
Like mariners, we are all amazed with dread.
Enter the Corinthian Shepherd.
Cor. Sh. Are ye the men to tell me where to find
The mansion of the sovereign Oedipus?
Or better, where he may himself be found?
Ch. Here is the roof you seek, and he, our lord,
