Cre. ’Twas you first poisoned mine; and yet, methinks, My face and person should not make you sport.

Eur. You force me, by your importunities, To shew you what you are.

Cre. A prince, who loves you; And, since your pride provokes me, worth your love.  Even at its highest value.

Eur. Love from thee! 
Why love renounced thee ere thou saw’st the light;
Nature herself start back when thou wert born,
And cried,—­the work’s not mine. 
The midwife stood aghast; and when she saw
Thy mountain back, and thy distorted legs,
Thy face itself;
Half-minted with the royal stamp of man,
And half o’ercome with beast, stood doubting long,
Whose right in thee were more;
And knew not, if to burn thee in the flames
Were not the holier work.

Cre. Am I to blame, if nature threw my body
In so perverse a mould? yet when she cast
Her envious hand upon my supple joints,
Unable to resist, and rumpled them
On heaps in their dark lodging, to revenge
Her bungled work, she stampt my mind more fair;
And as from chaos, huddled and deformed,
The god struck fire, and lighted up the lamps
That beautify the sky, so he informed
This ill-shaped body with a daring soul;
And, making less than man, he made me more.

Eur. No; thou art all one error, soul and body;
The first young trial of some unskilled power,
Rude in the making art, and ape of Jove. 
Thy crooked mind within hunched out thy back,
And wandered in thy limbs.  To thy own kind
Make love, if thou canst find it in the world;
And seek not from our sex to raise an offspring,
Which, mingled with the rest, would tempt the gods,
To cut off human kind.

Cre. No; let them leave
The Argian prince for you.  That enemy
Of Thebes has made you false, and break the vows
You made to me.

Eur. They were my mother’s vows, Made when I was at nurse.

Cre. But hear me, maid: 
This blot of nature, this deformed, loathed Creon,
Is master of a sword, to reach the blood
Of your young minion, spoil the gods’ fine work,
And stab you in his heart.

Eur. This when thou dost,
Then mayst thou still be cursed with loving me;
And, as thou art, be still unpitied, loathed;
And let his ghost—­No, let his ghost have rest—­
But let the greatest, fiercest, foulest fury,
Let Creon haunt himself. [Exit EUR.

Cre. ’Tis true, I am
What she has told me—­an offence to sight: 
My body opens inward to my soul,
And lets in day to make my vices seen
By all discerning eyes, but the blind vulgar. 
I must make haste, ere OEdipus return,
To snatch the crown and her—­for I still love,
But love with malice.  As an angry cur
Snarls while he feeds, so will I seize and stanch
The hunger of my love on this proud beauty,
And leave the scraps for slaves.