Among the modern poems on Xerxes and the battle of Salamis, is one by the Scotch poet and translator, JOHN STUART BLACKIE, from which we take the following extracts:
Seest thou where, sublimely seated on a silver-footed throne,
With a high tiara crested, belted with a jewelled zone,
Sits the king of kings, and, looking from the rocky mountain-side,
Scans, with masted armies studded far, the fair Saronic tide?
Looks he not with high hope beaming? looks he not with pride elate?
Seems he not a god? The words he speaks are big with instant fate.
He hath come from far Euphrates, and from Tigris' rushing tide,
To subdue the strength of Athens, to chastise the Spartan's pride;
He hath come with countless armies, gathered slowly from afar,
From the plain, and from the mountain, marshalled ranks of motley war;
From the land and from the ocean, that the burdened billows groan,
That the air is black with banners, which great Xerxes calls his own.
Soothly he hath nobly ridden o'er the fair fields, o'er the waste,
As the earth might bear the burden, with a weighty-footed haste;
He hath cut in twain the mountain, he hath bridged the rolling main,
He hath lashed the flood of Hel'le, bound the billow with a chain;
And the rivers shrink before him, and the sheeted lakes are dry,
From his burden-bearing oxen, and his hordes of cavalry;
And the gates of Greece stand open; Ossa and Olympus fail;
And the mountain-girt Æmo'nia spreads the river and the gale.
Stood nor man nor god before him; he hath scoured the Attic land,
Chased the valiant sons of Athens to a barren island's strand;
He hath hedged them round with triremes, lines on lines of bristling war;
He hath doomed the prey for capture; he hath spread his meshes far;
And he sits sublimely seated on a throne with pride elate,
To behold the victim fall beneath the sudden swooping Fate.
Then follows an account of the nations which formed the Persian hosts, their arrangement to entrap the Greeks, who were thought to be meditating flight, the patriotic enthusiasm of the latter, the naval battle which followed, and the disastrous defeat of the Persians, the poem closing with the following satirical address to Xerxes:
Wake thee! wake thee! blinded Xerxes! God hath found thee out at last;
Snaps thy pride beneath his judgment, as the tree before the blast.
Haste thee! haste thee! speed thy couriers—Persian couriers travel lightly—
To declare thy stranded navy, that by cruel death unsightly
Dimmed thy glory. Hie thee! hie thee! hence, even by what way thou camest,
Dwarfed to whoso saw thee mightiest, and where thou wert fiercest, tamest!
Frost and fire shall league together, angry heaven to earth respond,
Strong Poseidon with his trident break thy impious-vaunted bond;
Where thou passed, with mouths uncounted, eating up the famished land,
With few men a boat shall ferry Xerxes to the Asian strand.
Haste thee! haste thee! they are waiting by the palace gates for thee;
By the golden gates of Susa eager mourners wait for thee.
Haste thee! where the guardian elders wait, a hoary-bearded train;
They shall see their king, but never see the sons they loved, again.
Where thy weeping mother waits thee, Queen Atossa waits to see
Dire fulfilment of her troublous, vision-haunted sleep in thee.
She hath dreamt, and she shall see it, how an eagle, cowed with awe,
Gave his kingly crest to pluck before a puny falcon's claw.
Haste thee! where the mighty shade of great Darius through the gloom
Rises dread, to teach thee wisdom, couldst thou learn it, from the tomb.
There begin the sad rehearsal, and, while streaming tears are shed,
To the thousand tongues that ask thee, tell the myriads of thy dead!