Hippolytus (1385-1430)

what can I say? How from my life get rid of this relentless agony? O that the stern Death-god, night’s black visitant, would give my sufferings rest!

Poor sufferer! cruel the fate that links thee to it!

Thy noble soul hath been thy ruin.

Ah! the fragrance from my goddess wafted! Even in my agony I feel thee near and find relief; she is here in this very place, my goddess Artemis.

She is, poor sufferer! the goddess thou hast loved the best.

Dost see me, mistress mine? dost see my present suffering?

I see thee, but mine eyes no tear may weep.

Thou hast none now to lead the hunt or tend thy fane.

None now; yet e’en in death I love thee still.

None to groom thy steeds, or guard thy shrines.

Twas Cypris, mistress of iniquity, devised this evil.

Ah me! now know I the goddess who destroyed me.

She was jealous of her slighted honour, vexed at thy chaste life.

Ah! then I see her single hand hath struck down three of us.

Thy sire and thee, and last thy father’s wife.

My sire’s ill-luck as well as mine I mourn.

He was deceived by a goddess’s design.

Woe is thee, my father, in this sad mischance!

My son, I am a ruined man; life has no joys for me.

For this mistake I mourn thee rather than myself.

O that I had died for thee, my son!

Ah! those fatal gifts thy sire Poseidon gave.

Would God these lips had never uttered that prayer!

Why not? thou wouldst in any case have slain me in thy fury then.

Yes; Heaven had perverted my power to think.

O that the race of men could bring a curse upon the gods!

Enough! for though thou pass to gloom beneath the earth, the wrath of Cypris shall not, at her will, fall on thee unrequited, because thou hadst a noble righteous soul.[*]

For I with mine own hand will with these unerring shafts avenge me on another,[*] who is her votary, dearest to her of all the sons of men. And to thee, poor sufferer, for thy anguish now will I grant high honours in the city of Troezen;

for thee shall maids unwed before their marriage cut off their hair, thy harvest through the long roll of time of countless bitter tears. Yea, and for ever shall the virgin choir hymn thy sad memory,

nor shall Phaedra’s love for thee fall into oblivion and pass away unnoticed.