[To TIR.] Why stand’st thou here, impostor?  So old, and yet so wicked,—­Lie for gain?  And gain so short as age can promise thee!

Tir. So short a time as I have yet to live,
Exceeds thy ’pointed hour;—­remember Laius! 
No more; if e’er we meet again, ’twill be
In mutual darkness; we shall feel before us
To reach each other’s hand;—­remember Laius!
                                   [Exit TIRESIAS:  Priests follow.

  OEDIPUS solus.

Remember Laius! that’s the burden still: 
Murther and incest! but to hear them named
My soul starts in me:  The good sentinel
Stands to her weapons, takes the first alarm
To guard me from such crimes.—­Did I kill Laius? 
Then I walked sleeping, in some frightful dream;
My soul then stole my body out by night;
And brought me back to bed ere morning-wake
It cannot be even this remotest way,
But some dark hint would justle forward now,
And goad my memory.—­Oh my Jocasta!

  Enter JOCASTA.

Joc. Why are you thus disturbed?

OEdip. Why, would’st thou think it?  No less than murder.

Joc. Murder! what of murder?

OEdip. Is murder then no more? add parricide, And incest; bear not these a frightful sound?

Joc. Alas!

OEdip. How poor a pity is alas, For two such crimes!—­was Laius us’d to lie?

Joc. Oh no:  The most sincere, plain, honest man; One who abhorred a lie.

OEdip. Then he has got that quality in hell. 
He charges me—­but why accuse I him? 
I did not hear him speak it:  They accuse me,—­
The priest, Adrastus and Eurydice,—­
Of murdering Laius!—­Tell me, while I think on’t,
Has old Tiresias practised long this trade?

Joc. What trade?

OEdip. Why, this foretelling trade.

Joc. For many years.

OEdip. Has he before this day accused me?

Joc. Never.

OEdip. Have you ere this inquired who did this murder?

Joc. Often; but still in vain.

OEdip. I am satisfied. 
Then ’tis an infant-lye; but one day old. 
The oracle takes place before the priest;
The blood of Laius was to murder Laius: 
I’m not of Laius’ blood.

Joc. Even oracles
Are always doubtful, and are often forged: 
Laius had one, which never was fulfilled,
Nor ever can be now.

OEdip. And what foretold it?

Joc. That he should have a son by me, foredoomed
The murderer of his father:  True, indeed,
A son was born; but, to prevent that crime,
The wretched infant of a guilty fate,
Bored through his untried feet, and bound with cords,
On a bleak mountain naked was exposed: 
The king himself lived many, many years,
And found a different fate; by robbers murdered,
Where three ways met:  Yet these are oracles,
And this the faith we owe them.