—and they embarked. It should be Rhodes indeed: to Rhodes they now are sailing.
Euripides lies buried in the little valley "laughed and moaned about by streams,"
"Boiling and freezing, like the love and hate
Which helped or harmed him through his earthly course.
They mix in Arethusa by his grave."
But, just as she had known, this revocation has consoled her. Now she will be able to forget. Never again will her eyes behold Athenai, nor in imagination see "the ghastly mirth that mocked her overthrow"; but she and Euthukles are exiles from the dead, not from the living, Athens:
"That's in the cloud there, with the new-born star!"
There is no despair, there can be none; for does not the soul anticipate its heaven here on earth:
"Above all crowding, crystal silentness,
Above all noise, a silver solitude . . .
Hatred and cark and care, what place have they
In yon blue liberality of heaven?
How the sea helps! How rose-smit earth will rise
Breast-high thence, some bright morning, and be Rhodes!"
They are entering Rhodes now, and every wave and wind seems singing out the same:
"All in one chorus—what the master-word
They take up? Hark! 'There are no gods, no gods!
Glory to God—who saves Euripides!'"
. . . There she is, Wild-Pomegranate-Flower, Balaustion—and Triumphant Woman. What other man has given us this?—and even Browning only here. Nearly always, for man's homage, woman must in some sort be victim: she must suffer ere he can adore. But Balaustion triumphs, and we hail her—and we hail her poet too, who dared to make her great not only in her love, but in her own deep-hearted, ardent self.