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OENONE
Die then, and keep a silence so inhuman;
But seek some other hand to close your eyes.
Tho' but a spark of life remains within you,
My soul shall go before you to the Shades.
A thousand roads are always open thither;
Pain'd at your want of confidence, I'll choose
The shortest. Cruel one, when has my faith
Deceived you! Think how in my arms you lay
New born. For you, my country and my children
I have forsaken. Do you thus repay
My faithful service?

PHAEDRA
What do you expect
From words so bitter? Were I to break silence
Horror would freeze your blood.

OENONE
What can you say
To horrify me more than to behold
You die before my eyes?

PHAEDRA
When you shall know
My crime, my death will follow none the less,
But with the added stain of guilt.

OENONE
Dear Madam,
By all the tears that I have shed for you,
By these weak knees I clasp, relieve my mind
From torturing doubt.

PHAEDRA
It is your wish. Then rise.

OENONE
I hear you. Speak.

PHAEDRA
Heav'ns! How shall I begin?

OENONE
Dismiss vain fears, you wound me with distrust.

PHAEDRA
O fatal animosity of Venus!
Into what wild distractions did she cast
My mother!

OENONE
Be they blotted from remembrance,
And for all time to come buried in silence.

PHAEDRA
My sister Ariadne, by what love
Were you betray'd to death, on lonely shores
Forsaken!

OENONE
Madam, what deep-seated pain
Prompts these reproaches against all your kin?

PHAEDRA
It is the will of Venus, and I perish,
Last, most unhappy of a family
Where all were wretched.

OENONE
Do you love?

PHAEDRA
I feel
All its mad fever.

OENONE
Ah! For whom?

PHAEDRA
Hear now
The crowning horror. Yes, I love--my lips
Tremble to say his name.

OENONE
Whom?

PHAEDRA
Know you him,
Son of the Amazon, whom I've oppress'd
So long?

OENONE
Hippolytus? Great gods!

PHAEDRA
'Tis you
Have named him.

OENONE
All my blood within my veins
Seems frozen. O despair! O cursed race!
Ill-omen'd journey! Land of misery!
Why did we ever reach thy dangerous shores?

PHAEDRA
My wound is not so recent. Scarcely had I
Been bound to Theseus by the marriage yoke,
And happiness and peace seem'd well secured,
When Athens show'd me my proud enemy.
I look'd, alternately turn'd pale and blush'd
To see him, and my soul grew all distraught;
A mist obscured my vision, and my voice
Falter'd, my blood ran cold, then burn'd like fire;
Venus I felt in all my fever'd frame,
Whose fury had so many of my race
Pursued. With fervent vows I sought to shun
Her torments, built and deck'd for her a shrine,
And there, 'mid countless victims did I seek

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