CHORUS. O Jove, king Jove destroyed hast thou Our high-vaunting countless hosts! Our high-vaunting countless hosts Where be they now? Susa's glory, Ecbatana's pride, In murky sorrow thou didst hide, And with delicate hands the virgins fair Their white veils tear, And salt streams flow from bright fountains of woe, And rain on the bosoms of snow. They whose love was fresh and young, Where are now their husbands strong? The soft delights of the nuptial bed With purple spread, Where, where be they? They have lost the joy of their jocund years, And they weep with insatiate tears: And I will reply with my heart's strong cry, And lift the doleful lay. CHORAL HYMN. STROPHE I. Asia from each furthest corner Weeps her woes, a sonless mourner; Xerxes a wild chase pursuing, Xerxes led thee to thy ruin; Xerxes, luckless fancies wooing, Trimmed vain fleets for thy undoing. {317} Not like him the old Darius Shattered thus from Hellas came; Rightly he is honoured by us, Susa's bowman without blame. ANTISTROPHE I. Dark-prowed ships that plough wide ocean With well-poised wings through waves' commotion, Ships, the countless crews that carried, In briny death ye saw them buried, Where the Ionian beaks were dashing, Where the Persian booms were crashing! And our monarch scarcely scaping, Left with life the deathful fray, Through the plains of Thracia shaping Sad his bleak and wintry way. STROPHE II. But the firstlings of our losses The Ionian billow tosses, And Cychréan waves are hurried, O'er the stranded dead unburied. Let the sharp grief bite thy marrow, With thy wailing smite the sky! Freely voice thy heaving sorrow, With a weighty burden cry! ANTISTROPHE II. Woe's me! by the wild waves driven, By the mute sea-monsters riven,[n19] The untainted ocean's creatures Battening on their traceless features! Heirless homes are lorn and lonely, Childless parents weep and wail, Old men weep; with weeping only They receive the woeful tale. STROPHE III. Ah me! even now while we are mourning Some rebel hearts belike are spurning The Persian rule; some serf refuses The gold due to his master's uses. And some are slow with reverence low To kiss the ground and adore, For the power that long was fresh and strong Is found no more. {318} ANTISTROPHE III. The tongues of men, free from wise reining, Will now break forth with loud complaining; Unmuzzled now, unyoked, the rabble Will blaze abroad licentious babble. For the blood-drenched soil of the sea-swept isle Its prey restoreth never. And the thing that hath been henceforth shall be seen No more for ever. [_Enter_ ATOSSA.