Hippolytus

Perseus Greek · Perseus Greek · 516 sections

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Come follow, friends, singing to Artemis, daughter of Zeus, throned in the sky,
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whose votaries we are.
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Lady goddess, awful queen, daughter of Zeus, all hail! hail! child of
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Latona and of Zeus, peerless mid the virgin choir, who hast thy dwelling in heaven’s wide mansions at thy noble father’s court, in the golden house of Zeus.
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All hail! most beauteous Artemis, lovelier far than all the daughters of Olympus!
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For thee, O mistress mine, I bring this woven wreath, culled from a virgin meadow,
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where nor shepherd dares to herd his flock nor ever scythe hath mown, but o’er the mead unshorn the bee doth wing its way in spring; and with the dew from rivers drawn purity that garden tends. Such as know no cunning lore, yet in whose nature
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self-control, made perfect, hath a home, these may pluck the flowers, but not the wicked world. Accept, I pray, dear mistress, mine this chaplet from my holy hand to crown thy locks of gold; for I, and none other of mortals, have this high guerdon,
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to be with thee, with thee converse, hearing thy voice, though not thy face beholding. So be it mine to end my life as I began.
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My prince! we needs must call upon the gods, our lords, so wilt thou listen to a friendly word from me?
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Why, that will I! else were I proved a fool.
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Dost know, then, the way of the world?
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Not I; but wherefore such a question?
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It hates reserve which careth not for all men’s love.
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And rightly too; reserve in man is ever galling.
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But there’s a charm in courteous affability?
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The greatest surely; aye, and profit, too, at trifling cost.
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Dost think the same law holds in heaven as well?
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I trow it doth, since all our laws we men from heaven draw.
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Why, then, dost thou neglect to greet an august goddess?
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Whom speak’st thou of? Keep watch upon thy tongue lest it some mischief cause.
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Cypris I mean, whose image is stationed o’er thy gate.
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I greet her from afar, preserving still my chastity.
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Yet is she an august goddess, far renowned on earth.
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’Mongst gods as well as men we have our several preferences.
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I wish thee luck, and wisdom too, so far as thou dost need it.
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No god, whose worship craves the night, hath charms for me.
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My son, we should avail us of the gifts that gods confer.
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Go in, my faithful followers, and make ready food within the house; a well-filled board hath charms after the chase is o’er.
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Rub down my steeds ye must, that when I have had my all I may yoke them to the chariot and give them proper exercise.
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As for thy Queen of Love, a long farewell to her.
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Meantime I with sober mind, for I must not copy my young master,
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do offer up my prayer to thy image, lady Cypris, in such words as it becomes a slave to use. But thou should’st pardon all, who, in youth’s impetuous heat, speak idle words of thee; make as though thou hearest not,
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for gods must needs be wiser than the sons of men.
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A rock there is, where, as they say, the ocean dew distils, and from its beetling brow it pours a copious stream for pitchers to be dipped therein;
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’twas here I had a friend washing robes of purple in the trickling stream, and she was spreading them out on the face of a warm sunny rock; from her
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I had the tidings, first of all, that my mistress
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she was wasting on the bed of sickness, pent within her house, a thin veil o’ershadowing her head of golden hair.
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And this is the third day I hear that she hath closed her lovely lips and denied her chaste body all sustenance, eager to hide her suffering
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and reach death’s cheerless bourn.
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Maiden, thou must be possessed, by Pan made frantic or by Hecate, or by the Corybantes dread, and Cybele the mountain mother.
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Or maybe thou hast sinned against Dictynna, huntress-queen, and art wasting for thy guilt in sacrifice unoffered. For she doth range o’er lakes’ expanse and past the bounds of earth
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upon the ocean’s tossing billows.
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Or doth some rival in thy house beguile thy lord, the captain of Erechtheus’ sons, that hero nobly bom, to secret amours hid from thee?
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Or hath some mariner sailing hither from Crete reached this port that sailors love, with evil tidings for our queen, and she with sorrow for her grievous fate
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is to her bed confined?
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Yea, and oft o’er woman’s wayward nature settles a feeling of miserable perplexity, arising from labour-pains or passionate desire.
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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.
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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
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wasting our queen’s fading charms.
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O, the ills of mortal men! the cruel diseases they endure! What can I do for thee? from what refrain? Here is the bright sun-light, here the azure sky; lo! we have brought thee on thy bed of sickness
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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
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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;
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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,
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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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Lift my body, raise my head! My limbs are all unstrung, kind friends.
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O handmaids, lift my arms, my shapely arms. The tire on my head is too heavy for me to wear; away with it, and let my tresses o’er my shoulders fall.
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Be of good heart, dear child; toss not so wildly to and fro.
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Lie still, be brave, so wilt thou find thy sickness easier to bear; suffering for mortals is nature’s iron law.
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Ah! would I could draw a draught of water pure from some dew-fed spring, and lay me down to rest in the grassy meadow ’neath the poplar’s shade!
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My child, what wild speech is this? O say not such things in public, wild whirling words of frenzy bred!
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Away to the mountain take me! to the wood, to the pine-trees I will go, where hounds pursue the prey, hard on the scent of dappled fawns. Ye gods! what joy to hark them on,
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to grasp the barbed dart, to poise Thessalian hunting-spears close to my golden hair, then let them fly.
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Why, why, my child, these anxious cares? What hast thou to do with the chase?
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Why so eager for the flowing spring, when hard by these towers stands a hill well watered, whence thou may’st freely draw?
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O Artemis, who watchest o’er sea-beat Limna and the race-course thundering to the horse’s hoofs,
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would I were upon thy plains curbing Venetian steeds!
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Why betray thy frenzy in these wild whirling words? Now thou wert for hasting hence to the hills away to hunt wild beasts, and now
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thy yearning is to drive the steed over the waveless sands. This needs a cunning seer to say what god it is that reins thee from the course, distracting thy senses, child.
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Ah me! alas! what have I done?
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Whither have I strayed, my senses leaving? Mad, mad! stricken by some demon’s curse! Woe is me! Cover my head again, nurse. Shame fills me for the words I have spoken.
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Hide me then; from my eyes the tear-drops stream, and for very shame I turn them away. Tis painful coming to one’s senses again, and madness, evil though it be, has this advantage, that one has no knowledge of reason’s overthrow.
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There then I cover thee; but when will death hide my body in the grave? Many a lesson length of days is teaching me. Yea, mortal men should pledge themselves
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to moderate friendships only, not to such as reach the very heart’s core; affection’s ties should be light upon them to let them slip or draw them tight. For one poor heart to grieve for twain, as I do
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for my mistress, is a burden sore to bear. Men say that too engrossing pursuits in life more oft cause disappointment than pleasure,
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and too oft are foes to health. Wherefore I do not praise excess so much as moderation, and with me wise men will agree.
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O aged dame, faithful nurse of Phaedra, our queen, we see her sorry plight; but what it is that ails her we cannot discern,
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so fain would learn of thee and hear thy opinion.
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I question her, but am no wiser, for she will not answer.
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Nor tell what source these sorrows have?
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The same answer thou must take, for she is dumb on every point.
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How weak and wasted is her body!
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What marvel? ’tis three days now since she has tasted food.
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Is this infatuation, or an attempt to die?
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’Tis death she courts; such fasting aims at ending life.
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A strange story! is her husband satisfied?
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She hides from him her sorrow, and vows she is not ill.
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Can he not guess it from her face?
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He is not now in his own country.
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But dost not thou insist in thy endeavour to find out her complaint, her crazy mind?
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I have tried every plan, and all in vain;
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yet not even now will I relax my zeal, that thou too, if thou stayest, mayst witness my devotion to my unhappy mistress.
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Come, come, my darling child, let us forget, the twain of us, our former words; be thou more mild,
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smoothing that sullen brow and changing the current of thy thought, and I, if in aught before I failed in humouring thee, will let that be and find some better course. If thou art sick with ills thou canst not name, there be women here to help to set thee right;
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but if thy trouble can to men’s ears be divulged, speak, that physicians may pronounce on it.
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Come, then, why so dumb? Thou shouldst not so remain, my child, but scold me if I speak amiss, or, if I give good counsel, yield assent.
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One word, one look this way! Ah me! Friends, we waste our toil to no purpose; we are as far away as ever; she would not relent to my arguments then, nor is she yielding now.
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Well, grow more stubborn than the sea, yet be assured of this,
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that if thou diest thou art a traitress to thy children, for they will ne’er inherit their father’s halls, nay, by that knightly queen the Amazon who bore a son to lord it over thine, a bastard born but not a bastard bred, whom well thou knowest,
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e’en Hippolytus.

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