Monologue

Hippolytus Monologue

From Hippolytus by Euripides

male · anguished · 2:24 min

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Ah, pain, pain, pain! O unrighteous curse! O unrighteous sire! No hope.--My head is stabbed with fire, And a leaping spasm about my brain. Stay, let me rest. I can no more. O fell, fell steeds that my own hand fed, Have ye maimed me and slain, that loved me of yore? --Soft there, ye thralls! No trembling hands As ye lift me, now!--Who is that that stands At the right?--Now firm, and with measured tread, Lift one accursèd and stricken sore By a father's sinning. Thou, Zeus, dost see me? Yea, it is I; The proud and pure, the server of God, The white and shining in sanctity! To a visible death, to an open sod, I walk my ways; And all the labour of saintly days Lost, lost, without meaning! Ah God, it crawls This agony, over me! Let be, ye thralls! Come, Death, and cover me: Come, O thou Healer blest! But a little more, And my soul is clear, And the anguish o'er! Oh, a spear, a spear! To rend my soul to its rest! Oh, strange, false Curse! Was there some blood-stained head, Some father of my line, unpunishèd, Whose guilt lived in his kin, And passed, and slept, till after this long day It lights... Oh, why on me? Me, far away And innocent of sin? O words that cannot save! When will this breathing end in that last deep Pain that is painlessness? 'Tis sleep I crave. When wilt thou bring me sleep, Thou dark and midnight magic of the grave!

About this piece

Hippolytus, in a moment of intense suffering and realization of his fate, grapples with the pain inflicted upon him by his father's actions and the curse that haunts his lineage.

20s · despair · death · fate · betrayal · isolation

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