Page:Tragedies of Seneca (1907) Miller.djvu/63

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When on a hideous charge he stood condemned;
Then, with a deadly purpose in his breast,
Did he approach his palace, and in haste
Beneath those hated battlements he went.
And as a lion rages o'er the sands,
And, threat'ning, tosses back his tawny mane; 920
So Oedipus advanced with blazing eyes,
And stern, mad face, while hollow groans burst forth,
And from his limbs there dripped a chilling sweat.
He foams and vents a stream of threat'ning words,
And from his heart his mighty grief o'erflows.
He in his madness seeks against himself 925
Some heavy penalty and like his fate.
"Why do I wait for punishment?" he cries;
"Let my guilty heart with hostile sword be pierced,
Or overwhelmed with flames or crushing rocks!
Oh, for a tiger or some bird of prey,
To rend my tender flesh! Do thou thyself,
Who hast beheld full many deeds of blood, 930
O cursed Cithaeron, from thy forests send
Thy wild beasts 'gainst me or thy greedy dogs.
Oh, that Agave were returned to earth!
But thou, my soul, why dost thou shrink from death?
For death alone can make thee innocent."
So spake he, and his impious hand he laid 935
Upon the hilt and drew his glittering sword.
"And dost thou, then, with this brief punishment
Expect to pay thy mighty debt of guilt,
And with one blow wilt balance all thy sins?
Thy death would satisfy thy murdered sire;
But what to appease thy mother wilt thou do,
And those thy children, shamefully begot?
What recompense canst make unto thy land, 940
Which for thy sin is smit with pestilence?
Such debts as these thou canst not pay by death.
Let Nature, who, in Oedipus alone,
Strange births devising, hath her laws o'erturned,
Subvert herself again to punish him.
Let it be mine, in never-ending round, 945
To live and die, and to be born again,