Page:Euripides and his age.djvu/230

226 in any other way, a strange poignant note amid the beauty, where mortal emotion breaks against the cliffs of immortal calm. After many words of tenderness Artemis finishes (1437 ff.):

Farewell! I may not watch man's fleeting breath, Nor stain mine eyes with the effluence of death. And sure that terror now is very near. . . . (The Goddess slowly rises and floats away.)

Farewell! Farewell, most blessed! Lift thee clear Of soiling men. Thou wilt not grieve in heaven For our long love. . . . Father, thou art forgiven; It was Her will; I am not wroth with thee. . . . I have obeyed her all my days!

Of course the epiphany does not give what our jaded senses secretly demand, a strong "curtain." It gives the antique peaceful close. The concrete men and women whom we have seen before us, striving and suffering, dissolve into the beautiful mist of legend; strife and passion and sharp cries sink away into the telling of old fables; then the fables themselves have their lines of consequence reaching out to touch the present world and the thing that we are doing now: to make it the fulfilment of an ancient command or prophecy, to give it a meaning that we had