Hippolytus

Euripides

Euripides. The Plays of Euripides, Translated into English Prose from the Text of Paley. Vol. I. Coleridge, Edward P., translator. London: George Bell and Sons, 1906.

  1. We dwell on this too long; I was not wise, I own;
  2. but there are yet ways of escape from the trouble, my child.
Phaedra
  1. Be dumb henceforth; evil was thy first advice to me, evil too thy attempted scheme. Begone and leave me, look to thyself; I will my own fortunes for the best arrange. (Exit Nurse).
  2. Ye noble daughters of Troezen, grant me the only boon I crave; in silence bury what ye here have heard.
Chorus
  1. By majestic Artemis, child of Zeus, I swear I will never divulge aught of thy sorrows.
Phaedra
  1. ’Tis well. But I, with all my thought,[*](The reading προστρέπουσ’ offers no clear meaning; of the various suggestions Monk’s προσκοποῦσ’ is the simplest.) can but one way discover out of this calamity, that so I may secure my children’s honour, and find myself some help as matters stand. For never, never will I bring shame upon my Cretan home,
  2. nor will I, to save one poor life, face Theseus after my disgrace.
Chorus
  1. Art thou bent then on some cureless woe?
Phaedra
  1. On death; the means thereto must I devise myself.
Chorus
  1. Hush!
Phaedra
  1. Do thou at least advise me well.
  2. For this very day shall I gladden Cypris, my destroyer, by yielding up my life, and shall own myself vanquished by cruel love. Yet shall my dying be another’s curse, that he may learn not to exult at my misfortunes;
  3. but when he comes to share the self-same plague with me, he will take a lesson in wisdom.
Chorus
  1. O to be nestling ’neath some pathless cavern, there by god’s creating hand to grow into a bird amid the winged tribes!
  2. Away would I soar to Adrians wave-beat shore and to the waters of Eridanus; where a father’s hapless daughters[*](The daughters of Helios and Clymene are represented as weeping for Phaethon their brother on the banks of Eridanus (Po). Ovid Metam. v. 340 sqq. says the sun turned their tears into amber, and they themselves became poplars on the river-bank.) in their grief for Phaethon
  3. distil into the glooming flood the amber brilliance of their tears.
Chorus
  1. And to the apple-bearing strand of those minstrels in the west I then would come, where ocean’s lord
  2. no more to sailors grants a passage o’er the deep dark main, finding there the heaven’s holy bound, upheld by Atlas, where water from ambrosial founts wells up beside the couch of Zeus inside his halls,
  3. and holy earth, the bounteous mother, causes joy to spring in heavenly breasts.
Chorus
  1. O white-winged bark, that o’er the booming ocean-wave didst bring