OEDIPUS THE KING - PBS

The Pythian hearth or birds that scream i' the air?
Did they not point at me as doomed to slay
My father? but he's dead and in his grave
And here am I who ne'er unsheathed a sword;
Unless the longing for his absent son
Killed him and so I slew him in a sense.
But, as they stand, the oracles are dead--
Dust, ashes, nothing, dead as Polybus.
JOCASTA Say, did not I foretell this long ago?
OEDIPUS Thou didst: but I was misled by my fear.
JOCASTA Then let I no more weigh upon thy soul.
OEDIPUS Must I not fear my mother's marriage bed.
JOCASTA Why should a mortal man, the sport of chance,
With no assured foreknowledge, be afraid?
Best live a careless life from hand to mouth.
This wedlock with thy mother fear not thou.
How oft it chances that in dreams a man
Has wed his mother! He who least regards
Such brainsick phantasies lives most at ease.
OEDIPUS I should have shared in full thy confidence,
Were not my mother living; since she lives
Though half convinced I still must live in dread.
JOCASTA And yet thy sire's death lights out darkness much.
OEDIPUS Much, but my fear is touching her who lives.
MESSENGER Who may this woman be whom thus you fear?
OEDIPUS Merope, stranger, wife of Polybus.
MESSENGER And what of her can cause you any fear?
OEDIPUS A heaven-sent oracle of dread import.
MESSENGER A mystery, or may a stranger hear it?
OEDIPUS Aye, 'tis no secret. Loxias once foretold
That I should mate with mine own mother, and shed
With my own hands the blood of my own sire.
Hence Corinth was for many a year to me
A home distant; and I trove abroad,
But missed the sweetest sight, my parents' face.
MESSENGER Was this the fear that exiled thee from home?
OEDIPUS Yea, and the dread of slaying my own sire.