Enter OEDIPUS.

OEdip. O, ’tis too little this; thy loss of sight,
What has it done?  I shall be gazed at now
The more; be pointed at, There goes the monster! 
Nor have I hid my horrors from myself;
For, though corporeal light be lost for ever,
The bright reflecting soul, through glaring optics,
Presents in larger size her black ideas,
Doubling the bloody prospect of my crimes;
Holds fancy down, and makes her act again,
With wife and mother:—­Tortures, hell and furies! 
Ha! now the baleful offspring’s brought to light! 
In horrid form, they rank themselves before me;—­
What shall I call this medley of creation? 
Here one, with all the obedience of a son,
Borrowing Jocasta’s look, kneels at my feet,
And calls me father; there, a sturdy boy,
Resembling Laius just as when I killed him,
Bears up, and with his cold hand grasping mine,
Cries out, how fares my brother OEdipus? 
What, sons and brothers!  Sisters and daughters too! 
Fly all, begone, fly from my whirling brain! 
Hence, incest, murder! hence, you ghastly figures! 
O Gods!  Gods, answer; is there any mean? 
Let me go mad, or die.

  Enter JOCASTA.

Joc. Where, where is this most wretched of mankind,
This stately image of imperial sorrow,
Whose story told, whose very name but mentioned,
Would cool the rage of fevers, and unlock
The hand of lust from the pale virgin’s hair,
And throw the ravisher before her feet?

OEdip. By all my fears, I think Jocasta’s voice!—­
Hence fly; begone!  O thou far worse than worst
Of damning charmers!  O abhorred, loathed creature! 
Fly, by the gods, or by the fiends, I charge thee,
Far as the East, West, North, or South of heaven,
But think not thou shalt ever enter there;
The golden gates are barred with adamant,
’Gainst thee, and me; and the celestial guards,
Still as we rise, will dash our spirits down.

Joc. O wretched pair!  O greatly wretched we!  Two worlds of woe!

OEdip. Art thou not gone then? ha!  How darest thou stand the fury of the gods?  Or comest thou in the grave to reap new pleasures?

Joc. Talk on, till thou mak’st mad my rolling brain;
Groan still more death; and may those dismal sources
Still bubble on, and pour forth blood and tears. 
Methinks, at such a meeting, heaven stands still;
The sea, nor ebbs, nor flows; this mole-hill earth
Is heaved no more; the busy emmets cease: 
Yet hear me on—­

OEdip. Speak, then, and blast my soul.

Joc. O, my loved lord, though I resolve a ruin,
To match my crimes; by all my miseries,
’Tis horror, worse than thousand thousand deaths,
To send me hence without a kind farewell.

OEdip. Gods, how she shakes me!—­stay thee, O Jocasta!  Speak something ere thou goest for ever from me!