The main impression left by a repeated study of this magnificent drama is a sense of the loveliness and delight which the transfusing genius of a poet can throw around the ruin worked by blind instinct and hate, even around a whole world tortured by belief in gods whose supreme intelligence, will, and power, are quick to punish, but never pardon. No poem in the world conveys more pungently the aroma of life’s inextinguishable beauty and preciousness. Life does not become ugly because full of sin or pain. It can only become ugly by growing unintelligible. So long as it can be understood, it remains to man, whose joys are all founded upon perception, a thing that can be loved; this is the one and sufficient reason why tragic drama is beautiful.
For the writer of the Hippolytus, then, life is something profoundly sorrowful yet profoundly dear. Hippolytus’ address to Artemis on his return from the chase is compact of that mystic loveliness which fills remote glades with a visible presentment of the beauty of holiness:—
For thee, my Queen, this garland have I twined
Of blossoms from that meadow virginal,
Where neither shepherd dares to graze his flock,
Nor hath the scythe made entry: yet the bee
Doth haunt the mead, that voyager of spring,
’Mid Nature’s shyest charm of stream and verdure.
There may no base man enter; only he,
Who, taught by instinct, uninstructed else,