OED. Nursed in unbroken night, thou canst not harm Or me, or any man who seeth the day.
TI. No, not from me proceeds thy fall; the God, Who cares for this, is able to perform it.
OED. Came this device from Creon or thyself?
OED. O wealth and sovereign power and high success Attained through wisdom and admired of men, What boundless jealousies environ you! When for this rule, which to my hand the State Committed unsolicited and free, Creon, my first of friends, trusted and sure, Would undermine and hurl me from my throne, Meanly suborning such a mendicant Botcher of lies, this crafty wizard rogue, Blind in his art, and seeing but for gain. Where are the proofs of thy prophetic power? How came it, when the minstrel-hound was here, This folk had no deliverance through thy word? Her snare could not be loosed by common wit, But needed divination and deep skill; No sign whereof proceeded forth from thee Procured through birds or given by God, till I, The unknowing traveller, overmastered her, The stranger Oedipus, not led by birds, But ravelling out the secret by my thought: Whom now you study to supplant, and trust To stand as a supporter of the throne Of lordly Creon,--To your bitter pain Thou and the man who plotted this will hunt Pollution forth[2].--But for thy reverend look Thou hadst atoned thy trespass on the spot.
CH. Your friends would humbly deprecate the wrath That sounds both in your speech, my lord, and his. That is not what we need, but to discern How best to solve the heavenly oracle.
TI. Though thou art king and lord, I claim no less Lordly prerogative to answer thee. Speech is my realm; Apollo rules my life, Not thou. Nor need I Creon to protect me. Now, then: my blindness moves thy scorn:--thou hast Thy sight, and seest not where thou art sunk in evil, What halls thou dost inhabit, or with whom: Know'st not from whence thou art--nay, to thy kin, Buried in death and here above the ground, Unwittingly art a most grievous foe. And when thy father's and thy mother's curse With fearful tread shall drive thee from the land, On both sides lashing thee,--thine eye so clear Beholding darkness in that day,--oh, then, What region will not shudder at thy cry? What echo in all Cithaeron will be mute, When thou perceiv'st, what bride-song in thy hall Wafted thy gallant bark with nattering gale To anchor,--where? And other store of ill Thou seest not, that shall show thee as thou art, Merged with thy children in one horror of birth. Then rail at noble Creon, and contemn My sacred utterance! No life on earth More vilely shall be rooted out, than thine.