Euripides' HIPPOLYTUS Complete

Translated by E. Coleridge.

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61 pages - You are on Page 8

(epode)

Yea, and oft o'er woman's wayward nature settles a feeling of miserable
helplessness, arising from pains of child-birth or of passionate desire.
I, too, have felt at times this sharp thrill shoot through me, but
I would cry to Artemis, queen of archery, who comes from heaven to
aid us in our travail, and thanks to heaven's grace she ever comes
at my call with welcome help. Look! where the aged nurse is bringing
her forth from the house before the door, while on her brow the cloud
of gloom is deepening. My soul longs to learn what is her grief, the
canker that is wasting our queen's fading charms. (Phaedra is led
out and placed upon a couch by the Nurse and attendants. The following
lines between the Nurse and Phaedra are chanted.)

Nurse: O, the ills of mortal men! the cruel diseases they endure!
What can I do for thee? from what refrain? Here is the bright sunlight,
here the azure sky; lo! we have brought thee on thy bed of sickness
without the palace; for all thy talk was of coming hither, but soon
back to thy chamber wilt thou hurry. Disappointment follows fast with
thee, thou hast no joy in aught for long; the present has no power
to please; on something absent next thy heart is set. Better be sick
than tend the sick; the first is but a single ill, the last unites
mental grief with manual toil. Man's whole life is full of anguish;
no respite from his woes he finds; but if there is aught to love beyond
this life, night's dark pall doth wrap it round. And so we show our
mad love of this life because its light is shed on earth, and because
we know no other, and have naught revealed to us of all our earth
may hide; and trusting to fables we drift at random.

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