No More Learning

Hark to me, Persians! Persia's host lies low.

CHORUS

O ruin manifold, and woe, and fear!
Let the wild tears run down, for the great doom is here!

MESSENGER

This blow hath fallen, to the utterance, And I, past hope, behold
my safe return!

CHORUS

Too long, alack, too long this life of mine,
That in mine age I see this sudden woe condign!

MESSENGER

As one who saw, by no loose rumour led,
Lords, I would tell what doom was dealt to us.

CHORUS

Alack, how vainly have they striven!
Our myriad hordes with shaft and bow
Went from the Eastland, to lay low
Hellas, beloved of Heaven!

MESSENGER

Piled with men dead, yea, miserably slain,
Is every beach, each reef of Salamis!

CHORUS

Thou sayest sooth--ah well-a-day!
Battered amid the waves, and torn,
On surges hither, thither, borne,
Dead bodies, bloodstained and forlorn,
In their long cloaks they toss and stray!

MESSENGER

Their bows availed not! all have perished, all,
By charging galleys crushed and whelmed in death.

CHORUS

Shriek out your sorrow's wistful wail!
To their untimely doom they went;
Ill strove they, and to no avail,
And minished is their armament!

MESSENGER

Out on thee, hateful name of Salamis,
Out upon Athens, mournful memory!

CHORUS

Woe upon this day's evil fame!
Thou, Athens, art our murderess;
Alack, full many a Persian dame
Is left forlorn and husbandless!

ATOSSA

Mute have I been awhile, and overwrought
At this great sorrow, for it passeth speech,
And passeth all desire to ask of it.
Yet if the gods send evils, men must bear.
(_To the_ MESSENGER)
Unroll the record! stand composed and tell,
Although thy heart be groaning inwardly,
Who hath escaped, and, of our leaders, whom
Have we to weep? what chieftains in the van
Stood, sank, and died and left us leaderless?

MESSENGER

Xerxes himself survives and sees the day.

ATOSSA

Then to my line thy word renews the dawn
And golden dayspring after gloom of night!

MESSENGER

But the brave marshal of ten thousand horse,
Artembares, is tossed and flung in death
Along the rugged rocks Silenian.
And Dadaces no longer leads his troop,
But, smitten by the spear, from off the prow
Hath lightly leaped to death; and Tenagon,
In true descent a Bactrian nobly born,
Drifts by the sea-lashed reefs of Salamis,
The isle of Ajax. Gone Lilaeus too,
Gone are Arsames and Argestes! all,
Around the islet where the sea-doves breed,
Dashed their defeated heads on iron rocks;
Arcteus, who dwelt beside the founts of Nile,
Adeues, Pheresseues, and with them
Pharnuchus, from one galley's deck went down.
Matallus, too, of Chrysa, lord and king
Of myriad hordes, who led unto the fight
Three times ten thousand swarthy cavaliers,
Fell, with his swarthy and abundant beard
Incarnadined to red, a crimson stain
Outrivalling the purple of the sea!