NPWM: Two men in me

Translated from Racine, “Plaintes d’un Chrétien sur les contrariétés qu’il éprouve au dedans de lui-même”.

My God, what a cruel war!
I think there are two men in me:
The one would, full of love for thee,
Make my heart forever faithful.
The other one is ever hostile
And hardens me against thy law.

The one divine, all full of faith,
Would raise me always up on high,
And when he lifts me to the sky
I count as nothing all the world.
But then the other’s mortal load
Oppresses me upon the earth.

Alas! at war within my heart,
How can I ever come to peace?
I would leave sin, but cannot cease.
I would do good, but cannot move.
I fail to do the good I love,
And do the evil that I hate.

O grace, O ray of God, come save
The man who in these lines implores—
Drive out my sin with gentle force
And make accord between us both
Converting thus this slave of death
Into thy voluntary slave.

NPWM: from Phèdre

Madame, before you go:
I know that you have wished to have a different life.
My father lives no more: it is as I suspected;
Only cruel death, extinguishing his light
Could keep it hidden from our eyes for such a time.
Atropos at last has cut the living thread
Of Hercules’s friend and partner and successor.
I know that in your hatred, which cares not for his virtues,
You hear without regret these names I give to Theseus.
One hope there is that tempers my sadness and bereavement.
Now I can lift from you the cruel interdiction
Placed on you by my father: long have I deplored it.
You shall be sovereign over your life, over your heart,
And in this land of Troezen, the land of Pittheus
My ancestor, the rule of which comes now to me,
Whose people with one voice acclaim me as their king,
I will make you as free and freer than myself.