Deep in the rock, that love no more might roam,
She built a shrine, and named it Love-at-home:
And the rock held it, but its face alway
Seeks Trozên o’er the seas.“[[32]]
Thus Phædra tried to exorcise her passion; but there came a time when Theseus, to expiate some sin, retired to Trozen with his queen. There, meeting the young prince daily, love reawakened; and at the opening of the tragedy it is secretly consuming her very life.
And here that grievous and amazéd queen,
Wounded and wondering, with ne’er a word,
Wastes slowly; and her secret none hath heard
Nor dreamed.[[32]]
Now Aphrodite’s hour has come, and Phædra is the weapon with which she will strike. The young queen’s vigilant honour, proud and enduring, shall be overthrown, by a broken word uttered in weakness; and she shall die, dragging down Hippolytus with her. Even while the goddess is invoking the prince’s doom, there are cheery distant sounds of the returning hunt; and the voice of Hippolytus raised above the rest in a hymn to Artemis. Aphrodite lingers an instant longer, and the menace of her final words shatters the blithe harmony that is approaching: