Gorges mysterious of frondage, Cithæron
Beast-haunted, O birth-bed of snows, O thou apple of Artemis' eye,
Ah that thou ne'er hadst received him, the babe of Jocasta, to rear on
Thy lap such a fosterling, Oedipus, thrust from his home as to die,
Life-marked with the brooch-pin golden-looping!
And O that the portent, the wings of the Sphinx from the mountain swooping,
Down on the land for its woe had not come,
The maiden that sang us a chant of doom,
An untuneable cry,
When with talons of feet and of hands on the ramparts of Kadmus she darted,
And bearing his offspring to sun-litten cloudland untrodden departed,
She whom Hades from dens of the dead810
Against Kadmus' children sped!
But a new curse lights upon Thebes and her halls;
For 'twixt Oedipus' sons the hell-seed falls
Of strife, and it blossometh red.
For never may aught that is utter shame
Bear honour's name;
Nay, nor the unblest spousal's fruit
Are sons true-born, but with stain they pollute
Their begetter, the stock that sprang from the self-same root.
Thou didst bear, O land, thou didst bear of old—
For I heard, yea, I heard in mine home, in an alien tongue, the story—
