Why didst thou harbor me, Cithaeron, why
Didst thou not take and slay me?  Then I never
Had shown to men the secret of my birth. 
O Polybus, O Corinth, O my home,
Home of my ancestors (so wast thou called)
How fair a nursling then I seemed, how foul
The canker that lay festering in the bud! 
Now is the blight revealed of root and fruit. 
Ye triple high-roads, and thou hidden glen,
Coppice, and pass where meet the three-branched ways,
Ye drank my blood, the life-blood these hands spilt,
My father’s; do ye call to mind perchance
Those deeds of mine ye witnessed and the work
I wrought thereafter when I came to Thebes? 
O fatal wedlock, thou didst give me birth,
And, having borne me, sowed again my seed,
Mingling the blood of fathers, brothers, children,
Brides, wives and mothers, an incestuous brood,
All horrors that are wrought beneath the sun,
Horrors so foul to name them were unmeet. 
O, I adjure you, hide me anywhere
Far from this land, or slay me straight, or cast me
Down to the depths of ocean out of sight. 
Come hither, deign to touch an abject wretch;
Draw near and fear not; I myself must bear
The load of guilt that none but I can share.
[Enter Creon.]

Creon
Lo, here is Creon, the one man to grant
Thy prayer by action or advice, for he
Is left the State’s sole guardian in thy stead.

Oedipus
Ah me! what words to accost him can I find? 
What cause has he to trust me?  In the past
I have bee proved his rancorous enemy.

Creon
Not in derision, Oedipus, I come
Nor to upbraid thee with thy past misdeeds. 
(To bystanders)
But shame upon you! if ye feel no sense
Of human decencies, at least revere
The Sun whose light beholds and nurtures all. 
Leave not thus nakedly for all to gaze at
A horror neither earth nor rain from heaven
Nor light will suffer.  Lead him straight within,
For it is seemly that a kinsman’s woes
Be heard by kin and seen by kin alone.

Oedipus
O listen, since thy presence comes to me
A shock of glad surprise—­so noble thou,
And I so vile—­O grant me one small boon. 
I ask it not on my behalf, but thine.

Creon
And what the favor thou wouldst crave of me?

Oedipus
Forth from thy borders thrust me with all speed;
Set me within some vasty desert where
No mortal voice shall greet me any more.

Creon
This had I done already, but I deemed
It first behooved me to consult the god.

Oedipus
His will was set forth fully—­to destroy
The parricide, the scoundrel; and I am he.

Creon
Yea, so he spake, but in our present plight
’Twere better to consult the god anew.

Oedipus
Dare ye inquire concerning such a wretch?