No More Learning

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.
Cruel one, when has my faith ever betrayed you?
Think: when you were born my arms received you.
For you, I left everything, my land: my children. 235
Is this the reward that loyalty shall be given?

Phaedra

What benefit do you hope for from this violence?
You'll shudder with horror if I break my silence.

Oenone

Great gods, what could you tell me that wouldn't yield
To the horror of seeing you die, my eyes unsealed? 240

Phaedra

If you knew my crime, my fate that crushes the will,
I would die no less: I would die more guilty still.

Oenone

Madame, by the tears for you that wet my face,
By your faltering knees that I here embrace,
Free my spirit from dreadful questioning. 245

Phaedra

You wish it so. Rise.

Oenone

Speak: I am listening.

Phaedra

Heaven! What shall I tell her? Begin, but where?