Page:Four Plays of Aeschylus (Cookson).djvu/82

70 Weep, men of Persia, while ye hear

And harken while ye weep!

Yea, we have fought it to a finish—I

Thought not to see the day of my return.

O life! too tedious pilgrimage

To the last span outdrawn!

On fading eyes waxed dim with weary age

Was this dark day to dawn?

Persians, the story that I have to tell

Is not a thing caught up from others' lips;

All ills prepared for our discomfiture

Myself was witness of; yea, had my share.

Vain, vain the arrow-blast,

The tumult of loud war!

Vain all the missiles Asia idly cast

On Hellas' fatal shore!

The bodies of men miserably slain

Lie heaped upon the shore of Salamis

And glut full many a creek and cove thereby.

The bodies of the men that died

The breakers buffet, the billows beat!

Tinct with the azure of the sea-salt tide,

Rolled with the wreckage of a shattered fleet!