Page:Euripides and his age.djvu/246

242 One sees the Women of the Chorus listening for the Children's words; then they break, as it were, from the spell of their own super-mortal atmosphere, and fling themselves on the barred door. They beat in vain against the bars and the Children's voices cry for help from the other side.

But the inrush of violent horror is only tolerated for a moment. Even in the next words we are moving back to the realm of formal poetry:

Women Beating at the Door. Thou stone, thou thing of iron! Wilt verily Spill with thine hand that life, the vintage stored Of thine own agony? Others A woman slew her babes in days of yore, One, only one, from dawn to eventide. . ..

and in a moment we are away in a beautiful remote song about far-off children who have been slain in legend. That death-cry is no longer a shriek heard in the next room. It is the echo of many cries of children from the beginning of the world, children who are now at peace and whose ancient pain has become part mystery and part music. Memory—that Memory who was mother of the Muses—has done her work upon it.