The time will come, when a diviner flame[8] Shall warm my breast to sing of Cæsar's fame: Meanwhile permit, that my preluding muse In Theban wars an humbler theme may chuse: 50 Of furious hate surviving death, she sings, A fatal throne to two contending kings, And fun'ral flames that, parting wide in air, Express the discord of the souls they bear:[9] Of towns dispeopled, and the wand'ring ghosts 55 Of kings unburied in the wasted coasts; When Dirce's fountain blushed with Grecian blood,[10] And Thetis, near Ismenos'[11] swelling flood, With dread beheld the rolling surges sweep, In heaps, his slaughtered sons into the deep.[12] 60 What hero, Clio! wilt thou first relate?[13] The rage of Tydeus,[14] or the prophet's fate?[15] Or how, with hills of slain on ev'ry side, Hippomedon repelled the hostile tide?[16] Or how the youth[17] with ev'ry grace adorned 65 Untimely fell, to be for ever mourned? Then to fierce Capaneus thy verse extend, And sing with horror his prodigious end.[18] Now wretched Oedipus, deprived of sight, Led a long death in everlasting night; 70 But while he dwells where not a cheerful ray Can pierce the darkness, and abhors the day, The clear reflecting mind presents his sin In frightful views, and makes it day within; Returning thoughts in endless circles roll, 75 And thousand furies haunt his guilty soul: The wretch then lifted to th' unpitying skies Those empty orbs from whence he tore his eyes, Whose wounds, yet fresh, with bloody hands he strook,[19] While from his breast these dreadful accents broke. 80 "Ye gods! that o'er the gloomy regions reign, Where guilty spirits feel eternal pain; Thou, sable Styx! whose livid streams are rolled Through dreary coasts, which I though blind behold: Tisiphone,[20] that oft hast heard my pray'r, 85 Assist, if Oedipus deserve thy care! If you received me from Jocasta's womb,[21] And nursed the hope of mischiefs yet to come: If leaving Polybus, I took my way,[22] To Cirrha's temple[23] on that fatal day, 90 When by the son the trembling father died, Where the three roads the Phocian fields divide: If I the Sphinx's riddles durst explain, Taught by thyself to win the promised reign:[24] If wretched I, by baleful furies led, 95 With monstrous mixture stained my mother's bed, For hell and thee begot an impious brood, And with full lust those horrid joys renewed; Then self-condemned to shades of endless night, Forced from these orbs the bleeding balls of sight: 100