the relentless powers of destiny. What man upon earth can be more utterly miserable?
"Am I not born to evil, all unclean?
If I must flee, yet still in flight my doom
Is never more to see the friends I love,
Nor tread my country's soil; or else to bear
The guilt of incest, and my father slay;
Yea, Polybus, who brought me up.
***May I ne'er look
On such a day as that, but far away
Depart unseen from all the haunts of men."—(P.)
There is still a faint chance that, after all, Œdipus may be innocent; but it rests upon the chance expression of the slave, who had talked of "a band of robbers." Jocasta, indeed, is still incredulous, and is confident that this oracle will be proved as idle as the others; but, at any rate, the slave shall be summoned and examined.
In the pause of the action of the drama, the Chorus, left alone in possession of the stage, draw the same moral from the tale of Œdipus which the Chorus in 'Samson Agonistes' draws from him who had been
"The glory late of Israel, now the grief."
Woe to the man who walks proudly, fearing neither justice nor the eternal laws of a God who grows not old—who neither keeps his life from impious speech, nor his hands from profaning holy things. His downfall must be speedy and inevitable—
