The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Oedipus Trilogy, by Sophocles ...

THESEUS
OEDIPUS
Ask it not of me.
THESEUS
What ails thee now?
Ask not what? explain.
OEDIPUS
Thy words have told me who the suppliant is.
THESEUS
Who can he be that I should frown on him?
OEDIPUS
My son, O king, my hateful son, whose words
Of all men's most would jar upon my ears.
THESEUS
Thou sure mightest listen. If his suit offend,
No need to grant it. Why so loth to hear him?
OEDIPUS
That voice, O king, grates on a father's ears;
I have come to loathe it. Force me not to yield.
THESEUS
But he hath found asylum. O beware,
And fail not in due reverence to the god.
ANTIGONE
O heed me, father, though I am young in years.
Let the prince have his will and pay withal
What in his eyes is service to the god;
For our sake also let our brother come.
If what he urges tend not to thy good
He cannot surely wrest perforce thy will.
To hear him then, what harm? By open words
A scheme of villainy is soon bewrayed.
Thou art his father, therefore canst not pay
In kind a son's most impious outrages.
O listen to him; other men like thee
Have thankless children and are choleric,
But yielding to persuasion's gentle spell
They let their savage mood be exorcised.
Look thou to the past, forget the present, think
On all the woe thy sire and mother brought thee;
Thence wilt thou draw this lesson without fail,
Of evil passion evil is the end.
Thou hast, alas, to prick thy memory,
Stern monitors, these ever-sightless orbs.
O yield to us; just suitors should not need
To be importunate, nor he that takes
A favor lack the grace to make return.
OEDIPUS