Phaedra (Aricia)
Aricia says
How eagerly my heart hears what you say,
Tho’ it may be delusion, dear Ismene!
Did it seem possible to you, who know me,
That I, sad sport of a relentless Fate,
Fed upon bitter tears night and day,
Could ever taste the maddening draught of love?
The last frail offspring of a royal race,
Children of Earth, I only have survived
War’s fury. Cut off in the flow’r of youth,
Mown the sword, six brothers have I lost,
The hope of an illustrious house, whose blood
Earth drank with sorrow, near akin to his
Whom she herself produced. Since then, you know
How thro’ all Greece no heart has been allow’d
To sigh for me, lest a sister’s flame
The brothers’ ashes be perchance rekindled.
You know, besides, with what disdain I view’d
My conqueror’s suspicions and precautions,
And how, oppos’d as I have ever been
To love, I often thank’d the King’s injustice
Which happily confirm’d my inclination.
But then I never had beheld his son.
Not that, attracted merely the eye, I
love him for his beauty and his grace,
Endowments which he owes to Nature’s bounty,
Charms which he seems to know not or to scorn.
I love and prize in him riches more rare,
The virtues of his sire, without his faults.
I love, as I must own, that generous pride
Which ne’er has stoop’d beneath the amorous yoke.
Phaedra reaps little glory from a lover
So lavish of his sighs; I am too proud
To share devotion with a thousand others,
Or enter where the door is always open.
But to make one who ne’er has stoop’d before
Bend his proud neck, to pierce a heart of stone,
To bind a captive whom his chains astonish,
Who vainly ‘gainst a pleasing yoke rebels, –
That piques my ardour, and I long for that.
‘Twas easier to disarm the god of strength
Than this Hippolytus, for Hercules
Yielded so often to the eyes of beauty,
As to make triumph cheap. But, dear Ismene,
I take too little heed of opposition
Beyond my pow’r to quell, and you may hear me,
Humbled sore defeat, upbraid the pride
I now admire. What! Can he love? and I
Have had the happiness to bend –