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 

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