Oedipus (cont.)
Baulked of the knowledge that I came to seek.
But other grievous things he prophesied,
Woes, lamentations, mourning, portents dire;
To wit I should defile my mother’s bed
And raise up seed too loathsome to behold,
And slay the father from whose loins I sprang.
Warned by the oracle I turned and fled—
And Corinth henceforth was to me unknown
Save as I knew its region by the stars;—
Whither, I cared not, so I never might
Behold my doom of infamy fulfilled.
And in my wanderings I reached the place
Where, as thy story runs, the king was slain.
Then, lady—thou shalt hear the very truth—
As I drew near the triple-branching roads,
A herald met me and a man who sat
In a car drawn by colts—as in thy tale—
The man in front and the old man himself
Threatened to thrust me rudely from the path,
Then jostled by the charioteer in wrath
I struck him, and the old man, seeing this,
Watched till I passed and from his car brought down
Full on my head the double-pointed goad.
Yet was I quits with him and more; one stroke