Page:Four Plays of Aeschylus (1908) Morshead.djvu/114

84 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!