_Tir._ Fate! Nature! Fortune! what is all this world?
_OEdip._ Now, dotard; now, thou blind old wizard prophet, Where are your boding ghosts, your altars now; Your birds of knowledge, that in dusky air Chatter futurity? And where are now Your oracles, that called me parricide? Is he not dead? deep laid in his monument? And was not I in Thebes when fate attacked him? Avaunt, begone, you vizors of the Gods! Were I as other sons, now I should weep; But, as I am, I have reason to rejoice: And will, though his cold shade should rise and blast me. O, for this death, let waters break their bounds; Rocks, valleys, hills, with splitting Io's ring: Io, Jocasta, Io pæan sing!
_Tir._ Who would not now conclude a happy end! But all fate's turns are swift and unexpected.
_Æge._ Your royal mother Merope, as if She had no soul since you forsook the land, Waves all the neighbouring princes that adore her.
_OEdip._ Waves all the princes! poor heart! for what? O speak.
_Æge._ She, though in full-blown flower of glorious beauty, Grows cold, even in the summer of her age, And, for your sake, has sworn to die unmarried.
_OEdip._ How! for my sake, die and not marry! O My fit returns.
_Æge._ This diamond, with a thousand kisses blest, With thousand sighs and wishes for your safety, She charged me give you, with the general homage Of our Corinthian lords.
_OEdip._ There's magic in it, take it from my sight; There's not a beam it darts, but carries hell, Hot flashing lust, and necromantic incest: Take it from these sick eyes, oh hide it from me!-- No, my Jocasta, though Thebes cast me out, While Merope's alive, I'll ne'er return. O, rather let me walk round the wide world A beggar, than accept a diadem On such abhorred conditions.
_Joc._ You make, my lord, your own unhappiness, By these extravagant and needless fears.
_OEdip._ Needless! O, all you Gods! By heaven, I would rather Embrue my arms, up to my very shoulders, In the dear entrails of the best of fathers, Than offer at the execrable act Of damned incest: therefore no more of her.
_Æge._ And why, O sacred sir, if subjects may Presume to look into their monarch's breast, Why should the chaste and spotless Merope Infuse such thoughts, as I must blush to name?