Page:Four Plays of Aeschylus (Cookson).djvu/109

Rh Beyond the marshes stretched his power,

The shadow of a fenced tower

Flung wide o'er Helle's path;

It fell on cities fair that line

Propontis' inlet lacustrine

And stormy Pontus' strath.

His were the surf-beaten islands hard by us,

Where the thrust of the land lifts the wave-flung spray;

Lesbos and Paros and Naxos and Chios

And Samos, with oil of her olive-groves gray;

Myconus's earth paid toll to Darius;

Tenos-by-Andros acknowledged his sway.

Far from both shores, where the waters divide us,

Clasped in the mid-sea's ambient kiss,

Lemnos and Icarus' isle and Cnidus,

Paphos, Rhodes, Soloe were minions of his;

And thy namesake—thy parent—O thou, whose waves hide us,

Mother of mourning, Salamis!

The portion of Javan a wise moderation

Bound to his throne by her people's decrees;

Weariless then was the might of our nation;

Countless the swarm of her mercenaries;

But now in the day of God's sore visitation

We are tamed and chastised with the stripes of strong seas.