Page:Four Plays of Aeschylus (1908) Morshead.djvu/111

Rh Battered with stones, they fell, while arrows flew

From many a string, and smote them to the death.

Then, at the last, with simultaneous rush

The foe came bursting on us, hacked and hewed

To fragments all that miserable band,

Till not a soul of them was left alive.

Then Xerxes saw disaster's depth, and shrieked,

From where he sat on high, surveying all—

A lofty eminence, beside the brine,

Whence all his armament lay clear in view.

His robe he rent, with loud and bitter wail,

And to his land-force swiftly gave command

And fled, with shame beside him! Now, lament

That second woe, upon the first imposed!

Out on thee, Fortune! thou hast foiled the hope

And power of Persia: to this bitter end

My son went forth to wreak his great revenge

On famous Athens! all too few they seemed,

Our men who died upon the Fennel-field!

Vengeance for them my son had mind to take,

And drew on his own head these whelming woes.

But thou, say on! the ships that 'scaped from wreck—

Where didst thou leave them? make thy story clear.

The captains of the ships that still survived

Fled in disorder, scudding down the wind,

The while our land-force on Boeotian soil

Fell into ruin, some beside the springs

Dropping before they drank, and some outworn,

Pursued, and panting all their life away.

The rest of us our way to Phocis won,