| |
| WHERE Delphi’s consecrated pass | |
| Bœotia’s misty region faces, | |
| Rises a tomb-like stony mass | |
| Amid the bosky mountain-bases; | |
| It seems no work of human care, | 5 |
| But many rocks split off from one: | |
| Laius, the Theban king, lies there,— | |
| His murderer Œdipus, his son. | |
| |
| No pilgrim to the Pythian shrine | |
| But marked the spot with decent awe, | 10 |
| In presence of a power divine, | |
| O’erruling human will and law: | |
| And to some thoughtful hearts that scene,— | |
| Those paths, that mound, those browsing herds, | |
| Were more than e’er that tale had been, | 15 |
| Arrayed in Sophoclean words. | |
| |
| So is it yet,—no time or space | |
| That ancient anguish can assuage, | |
| For sorrow is of every race, | |
| And suffering due from every age; | 20 |
| That awful legend falls to us, | |
| With all the weight that Greece could feel, | |
| And every man is Œdipus, | |
| Whose wounds no mortal skill can heal. | |
| |
| O, call it Providence or fate, | 25 |
| The Sphinx propounds the riddle still, | |
| That man must bear and expiate | |
| Loads of involuntary ill: | |
| So shall endurance ever hold | |
| The foremost rank mid human needs, | 30 |
| Not without faith that God can mould | |
| To good the dross of evil deeds. | |
| |
