Enter TIRESIAS, leaning on a staff, led by his Daughter MANTO,
  followed by other Thebans.

O thou, whose most aspiring mind
Knows all the business of the courts above,
Opens the closets of the gods, and dares
To mix with Jove himself and Fate at council;
O prophet, answer me, declare aloud
The traitor, who conspired the death of Laius;
Or be they more, who from malignant stars
Have drawn this plague, that blasts unhappy Thebes?

Tir. We must no more than Fate commissions us
To tell; yet something, and of moment, I’ll unfold,
If that the god would wake; I feel him now,
Like a strong spirit charmed into a tree,
That leaps, and moves the wood without a wind: 
The roused god, as all this while he lay
Entombed alive, starts and dilates himself;
He struggles, and he tears my aged trunk
With holy fury; my old arteries burst;
My rivell’d skin,
Like parchment, crackles at the hallowed fire;
I shall be young again:—­Manto, my daughter,
Thou hast a voice that might have saved the bard
Of Thrace, and forced the raging bacchanals,
With lifted prongs, to listen to thy airs. 
O charm this god, this fury in my bosom,
Lull him with tuneful notes, and artful strings,
With powerful strains; Manto, my lovely child,
Sooth the unruly godhead to be mild.

        SONG TO APOLLO.

  Phoebus, god beloved by men,
  At thy dawn, every beast is roused in his den;
  At thy setting, all the birds of thy absence complain,
  And we die, all die, till the morning comes again. 
      Phoebus, god beloved by men! 
      Idol of the eastern kings,
      Awful as the god who flings
      His thunder round, and the lightning wings;
      God of songs, and Orphean strings,
      Who to this mortal bosom brings
      All harmonious heavenly things! 
      Thy drowsy prophet to revive,
  Ten thousand thousand forms before him drive: 
  With chariots and horses all o’fire awake him,
  Convulsions, and furies, and prophesies shake him: 
  Let him tell it in groans, though he bend with the load,
  Though he burst with the weight of the terrible god.

Tir. The wretch, who shed the blood of old Labdacides,
Lives, and is great;
But cruel greatness ne’er was long. 
The first of Laius’ blood his life did seize,
And urged his fate,
Which else had lasting been and strong. 
The wretch, who Laius killed, must bleed or fly;
Or Thebes, consumed with plagues, in ruins lie.

OEdip. The first of Laius’ blood! pronounce the person;
May the god roar from thy prophetic mouth,
That even the dead may start up, to behold;
Name him, I say, that most accursed wretch,
For, by the stars, he dies! 
Speak, I command thee;
By Phoebus, speak; for sudden death’s his doom: 
Here shall he fall, bleed on this very spot;
His name, I charge thee once more, speak.