CHORUS. 
      O mortal tribes of men, I 1
      How near to nothingness
I count you while your lives remain! 
What man that lives hath more of happiness
Than to seem blest, and, seeming, fade in night? 
O Oedipus, in this thine hour of gloom,
Musing on thee and thy relentless doom,
I call none happy who beholds the light.

      Thou through surpassing skill I 2
      Didst rise to wealth and power,
When thou the monstrous riddling maid didst kill,
And stoodst forth to my country as a tower
To guard from myriad deaths this glorious town;
Whence thou wert called my king, of faultless fame,
In all the world a far-resounded name,
Unparagoned in honour and renown.

But now to hear of thee, who more distressed?  II 1
    Who more acquainted with fierce misery,
Assaulted by disasters manifest,
    Than thou in this thy day of agony? 
Most noble, most renowned!—­Yet one same room
    Heard thy first cry, and in thy prime of power,
Received thee, harbouring both bride and groom,
    And bore it silently till this dread hour. 
How could that furrowing of thy father’s field
Year after year continue unrevealed?

Time hath detected thine unwitting deed, II 2
    Time, who discovers all with eyes of fire,
Accusing thee of living without heed
    In hideous wedlock husband, son, and sire. 
Ah would that we, thou child of Laius born,
    Ah would that we had never seen thee nigh! 
E’er since we knew thee who thou art, we mourn
    Exceedingly with cries that rend the sky. 
For, to tell truth, thou didst restore our life
And gavest our soul sweet respite after strife.

Enter Messenger.

MESS.  O ye who in this land have ever held
Chief honour, what an object of dire woe
Awaits your eyes, your ears!  What piercing grief
Your hearts must suffer, if as kinsmen should
Ye still regard the house of Laius! 
Not Phasis, nor the Danube’s rolling flood,
Can ever wash away the stain and purge
This mansion of the horror that it hides. 
—­And more it soon shall give to light, not now
Unconsciously enacted.  Of all ill,
Self-chosen sorrows are the worst to bear.

CH.  What hast thou new to add? the weight of grief
From that we know burdens the heart enough.

MESS.  Soon spoken and soon heard is the chief sum. 
Jocasta’s royal head is sunk in death.

CH.  The hapless queen!  What was the fatal cause?