Good news, for e'en intolerable ills,
Finding right issue, tend to naught but good.

OEDIPUS
How runs the oracle? thus far thy words
Give me no ground for confidence or fear.

CREON
If thou wouldst hear my message publicly,
I'll tell thee straight, or with thee pass within.

OEDIPUS
Speak before all; the burden that I bear
Is more for these my subjects than myself.

CREON
Let me report then all the god declared.
King Phoebus bids us straitly extirpate
A fell pollution that infests the land,
And no more harbor an inveterate sore.

OEDIPUS
What expiation means he? What's amiss?

CREON
Banishment, or the shedding blood for blood.
This stain of blood makes shipwreck of our state.

OEDIPUS
Whom can he mean, the miscreant thus denounced?