Invidious fortune, how thy baleful power Hath sunk the hopes of Persia! Bitter fruit My son hath tasted from his purposed vengeance On Athens, famed for arms; the fatal field Of Marathon, red with barbaric blood, Sufficed not: that defeat he thought to avenge, And pulled this hideous ruin on his head! Ah me! what sorrows for our ruined host Oppress my soul! Ye visions of the night, Haunting my dreams, how plainly did you show These ills! You set them in too fair a light. In the Epode, or closing portion of the tragedy, the following "Lament" may be considered as expressing the feelings with which the Persians bewailed this defeat, with reference to its effects upon Persian authority over the Asiatic nations: With sacred awe The Persian law No more shall Asia's realm revere: To their lord's hand, At his command, No more the exacted tribute bear. Who now falls prostrate at the monarch's throne? His regal greatness is no more. Now no restraint the wanton tongue shall own, Free from the golden curb of power; For on the rocks, washed by the beating flood, His awe-commanding nobles lie in blood. --POTTER'S trans. Among the modern poems on Xerxes and the battle of Salamis, is one by the Scotch poet and translator, JOHN STUART BLACKIE, from which we take the following extracts: Seest thou where, sublimely seated on a silver-footed throne, With a high tiara crested, belted with a jewelled zone, Sits the king of kings, and, looking from the rocky mountain-side, Scans, with masted armies studded far, the fair Saronic tide? Looks he not with high hope beaming? looks he not with pride elate? Seems he not a god? The words he speaks are big with instant fate. He hath come from far Euphrates, and from Tigris' rushing tide, To subdue the strength of Athens, to chastise the Spartan's pride; He hath come with countless armies, gathered slowly from afar, From the plain, and from the mountain, marshalled ranks of motley war; From the land and from the ocean, that the burdened billows groan, That the air is black with banners, which great Xerxes calls his own. Soothly he hath nobly ridden o'er the fair fields, o'er the waste, As the earth might bear the burden, with a weighty-footed haste; He hath cut in twain the mountain, he hath bridged the rolling main, He hath lashed the flood of Hel'le, bound the billow with a chain; And the rivers shrink before him, and the sheeted lakes are dry, From his burden-bearing oxen, and his hordes of cavalry; And the gates of Greece stand open; Ossa and Olympus fail; And the mountain-girt Æmo'nia spreads the river and the gale.