As love and duty shall drive you on,
Live, and don't allow that child of a Scythian, 210
Crushing your children in despised embrace,
To command the gods' and Greece's noblest race.
Live, and don't allow that child of a Scythian, 210
Crushing your children in despised embrace,
To command the gods' and Greece's noblest race.
Racine - Phaedra
What madness limits them in the midst of their force?
What spell, what poison has dried up their source? 190
Three times the shadows have obscured the sky,
Since sleep has entered in your saddened eye:
Three times has day driven night from the firmament,
While your body languished without nourishment.
By what fearful design are you being tempted? 195
By what right do you dare to let your life be ended?
You offend the gods, creators of your reality:
You betray the man to whom you pledged all loyalty:
You betray your children, those unfortunates,
Whom you drive beneath the yoke's harsh weight. 200
Think how that day will snatch away their mother,
And give hope to the son of that alien other,
To that proud enemy of yours, your race's doom,
That son an Amazon carried in her womb,
That Hippolytus. . .
Phaedra
Gods!
Oenone
You're moved by my censure? 205
Phaedra
Wretched woman, whose name do you dare to mention?
Oenone
That's good! Your anger rises for a reason:
I'm glad to see you shudder at her fatal son.
Live then.
As love and duty shall drive you on,
Live, and don't allow that child of a Scythian, 210
Crushing your children in despised embrace,
To command the gods' and Greece's noblest race.
But don't delay: each moment now is killing you.
Quickly then, your waning strength needs rescue,
While the flame of your life, almost dwindled, 215
Still endures, and can even yet be rekindled.
Phaedra
I've already prolonged its guilty thread too far.
Oenone
How! By what remorse are you being torn apart?
What crime could have brought about such fierce pain?
Your hands have no innocent blood on them, no stain? 220
Phaedra
Thanks to heaven, my hands are not criminals.
Would the gods my heart were innocent as well!
Oenone
And what fearful project have you tried,
That it still leaves your heart so terrified?
Phaedra
I've talked to you enough. Now, spare me the rest. 225
I die to evade this disastrous urge to confess.
Oenone
Well die: and so protect that inhuman silence:
But seek another hand to close your eyes, and
Though scarcely a feeble ray of light is left you,
My spirit will descend to the dead before you. 230
A thousand roads ever open lead us on,
And my true grief will choose the shortest one.
