Page:Tragedies of Euripides (Way 1896) v2.djvu/41

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EURIPIDES AND HIS WORK.
xxxvii

Quests as a sleuth-hound till it shall have tracked
The godless down in that relentless hunt.
We may not, in the heart's thought or the act,
Set us above the law of use and wont."

(Bacchanals, 882—893).

So, as he stretched lame hands of faith to "the all-beholding, unbeheld Himself,"[1] if haply he might feel after him and find him, it seemed to him at times that he gained a far-off vision of the truth, that he was touched by the skirts of the glory passing by, and knew that this was no presence that could be shapen in marble or in ivory and gold, nor could be contained in any temple made with hands:—

"What manner of house by hands of craftsmen framed
May compass with its walls the form divine?"

(Fragment 968).

As Wordsworth felt the immanence of that great Soul in nature which filleth heaven and earth,

"Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean, and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man,
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things,"

so Euripides felt that only the all-enfolding could be coextensive with the all-upholding:—

"Seest thou the boundless ether there on high
That folds the earth around with dewy arms?
This deem thou Zeus, this reckon one with God;"[2]

(Fragment 935).

  1. ↑ Fragment, 1115; and cf. Daughters of Troy, 884—888.
  2. ↑ Aeschylus, in a rare outburst of speculative daring, had already said,
    "Zeus is the ether, Zeus the earth, Zeus heaven;
    Yea, Zeus is all, and what is above all."
    (Fragment 379).
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