CHORUS. Zeus, lord and king! to death and nought Our countless host by thee is brought. Deep in the gloom of death, to-day, Lie Susa and Ecbatana: How many a maid in sorrow stands And rends her tire with tender hands! How tears run down, in common pain And woeful mourning for the slain! O delicate in dole and grief, Ye Persian women! past relief Is now your sorrow! to the war Your loved ones went and come no more! Gone from you is your joy and pride— Severed the bridegroom from the bride— The wedded couch luxurious Is widowed now, and all the house Pines ever with insatiate sighs, And we stand here and bid arise, For those who forth in ardour went And come not back, the loud lament! Land of the East, thou mournest for the host, Bereft of all thy sons, alas the day! For them whom Xerxes led hath Xerxes lost— Xerxes who wrecked the fleet, and flung our hopes away! How came it that Darius once controlled, And without scathe, the army of the bow, Loved by the folk of Susa, wise and bold? Now is the land-force lost, the shipmen sunk below! Ah for the ships that bore them, woe is me! Bore them to death and doom! the crashing prows Of fierce Ionian oarsmen swept the sea, And death was in their wake, and shipwreck murderous! Late, late and hardly—if true tales they tell— Did Xerxes flee along the wintry way And snows of Thrace—but ah, the first who fell Lie by the rocks or float upon Cychrea’s bay! Mourn, each and all! waft heavenward your cry, Stung to the soul, bereaved, disconsolate! Wail out your anguish, till it pierce the sky, In shrieks of deep despair, ill-omened, desperate! The dead are drifting, yea, are gnawed upon By voiceless children of the stainless sea, Or battered by the surge! we mourn and groan For husbands gone to death, for childless agony! Alas the aged men, who mourn to-day The ruinous sorrows that the gods ordain! O’er the wide Asian land, the Persian sway Can force no tribute now, and can no rule sustain. Yea, men will crouch no more to fallen power And kingship overthrown! the whole land o’er, Men speak the thing they will, and from this hour The folk whom Xerxes ruled obey his word no more. The yoke of force is broken from the neck— The isle of Ajax and th’ encircling wave Reek with a bloody crop of death and wreck Of Persia’s fallen power, that none can lift nor save! Re-enter ATOSSA, in mourning robes.