Contents - BOOK CONTENTS -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Jean Racine (1639–1699). Phædra.
The Harvard Classics. 1909–14.

Act III

Scene VI

What do these words portend, which seem’d to freeze

My very blood? Will Phædra, in her frenzy

Accuse herself, and seal her own destruction?

What will the King say? Gods! What fatal poison

Has love spread over all his house! Myself,

Full of a fire his hatred disapproves,

How changed he finds me from the son he knew!

With dark forebodings in my mind alarm’d,

But innocence has surely naught to fear.

Come, let us go, and in some other place

Consider how I best may move my sire

To tenderness, and tell him of a flame

Vex’d but not vanquish’d by a father’s blame.