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(From The Persians)
Translated by J. S. Blackie
SOME evil god, or an avenging spirit, | |
| Began the fray. From the Athenian fleet | |
| There came a Greek, and thus thy son bespoke: | |
| “Soon as the gloom of night shall fall, the Greeks | |
| No more will wait, but, rushing to their oars, | 5 |
| Each man will seek his safety where he may | |
| By secret flight.” This Xerxes heard, but knew not | |
| The guile of Greece, nor yet the jealous gods, | |
| And to his captains straightway gave command | |
| That, when the sun withdrew his burning beams, | 10 |
| And darkness filled the temple of the sky, | |
| In triple lines their ships they should dispose, | |
| Each wave-plashed outlet guarding, fencing round | |
| The isle of Ajax surely. Should the Greeks | |
| Deceive this guard, or with their ships escape | 15 |
| In secret flight, each captain with his head | |
| Should pay for his remissness. These commands | |
| With lofty heart, thy son gave forth, nor thought | |
| What harm the gods were weaving. They obeyed. | |
| Each man prepared his supper, and the sailors | 20 |
| Bound the blithe oar to its familiar block. | |
| Then, when the sun his shining glory paled, | |
| And night swooped down, each master of the oar, | |
| Each marshaller of arms, embarked; and then | |
| Line called on line to take its ordered place. | 25 |
| All night they cruised, and with a moving belt | |
| Prisoned the frith, till day ’gan peep, and still | |
| No stealthy Greek the expected flight essayed. | |
| But when at length the snowy-steeded day | |
| Burst o’er the main, all beautiful to see, | 30 |
| First from the Greeks a tuneful shout uprose, | |
| Well omened, and, with replication loud, | |
| Leaped the blithe echo from the rocky shore. | |
| Fear seized the Persian host, no longer tricked | |
| By vain opinion; not like wavering flight | 35 |
| Billowed the solemn pæan of the Greeks, | |
| But like the shout of men to battle urging, | |
| With lusty cheer. Then the fierce trumpet’s voice | |
| Blazed o’er the main; and on the salt sea flood | |
| Forthwith the oars with measured plash descended, | 40 |
| And all their lines, with dexterous speed displayed, | |
| Stood with opposing front. The right wing first, | |
| Then the whole fleet, bore down, and straight uprose | |
| A mighty shout: “Sons of the Greeks, advance! | |
| Your country free, your children free, your wives! | 45 |
| The altars of your native gods deliver, | |
| And your ancestral tombs,—all ’s now at stake!” | |
| A like salute from our whole line back rolled | |
| In Persian speech. Nor more delay, but straight | |
| Trireme on trireme, brazen beak on beak, | 50 |
| Dashed furious. A Greek ship led on the attack, | |
| And from the prow of a Phœnician struck | |
| The figure-head; and now the grapple closed | |
| Of each ship with his adverse desperate. | |
| At first the main line of the Persian fleet | 55 |
| Stood the harsh shock: but soon their multitude | |
| Became their ruin: in the narrow frith | |
| They might not use their strength, and, jammed together, | |
| Their ships with brazen beaks did bite each other, | |
| And shattered their own oars. Meanwhile the Greeks | 60 |
| Stroke after stroke dealt dexterous all around, | |
| Till our ships showed their keels, and the blue sea | |
| Was seen no more, with multitude of ships | |
| And corpses covered. All the shores were strewn, | |
| And the rough rocks, with dead: till, in the end, | 65 |
| Each ship in the barbaric host, that yet | |
| Had oars, in most disordered flight rowed off. | |
| As men that fish for tunnies, so the Greeks, | |
| With broken booms, and fragments of the wreck, | |
| Struck our snared men, and hacked them, that the sea | 70 |
| With wail and moaning was possessed around, | |
| Till black-eyed Night shot darkness o’er the fray. | |
| These ills thou nearest: to rehearse the whole, | |
| Ten days were few; but this, my queen, believe, | |
| No day yet shone on earth whose brightness looked | 75 |
| On such a tale of death. | |
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