aeschylus - Conscious Evolution TV

This earth, this Asia, wide as east from west,
Mourns-empty, of her manhood dispossessed.
Xerxes the King led forth his war-array I
Xerxes the King hath cast his host away I
Xerxes the King (Oh King unwise!)
Steered in the wake of doom his orient argosies I
How fell it that Darius, lord of the bow,
In Susa long ago,
Fair fortune had? That then
He who ruled Persia won the hearts of men?
The ships, the swarthy ships, with brow of gloom
And wide wings woven on the weary loom,
Landsmen and mariners haled to that far shore I
The ships, the black ships whelmed them evermore!
They struck, they split, they filled,
They sank: and, oh, death's throes Ionian
vengeance stilled.
And now by plain and pass, rude, wild and bare,
In the frore Thracian air,
After long wandering,
Scarce 'scaped with life, comes home our lord
the King.
But they on that wild water,
Firstlings of death and slaughter,
Roam, where the long waves lash Kychrean sands;
Roam, but no wave shall lift them,
Nor ebb nor flood-tide drift them
To this dear earth beloved above all lands.
Wide as the sky, and deep
As those dark waters sweep,
Wail I let grief gnaw your heart, and wring your
hands I
Combed with no tender combing,
Where angry waves break foaming,
Children of Ocean's unpolluted tide
Flesh their dumb mouths, and tear
The dead men once so fair:
Old eyes are wet whose tears TIme long since dried;
The sire weeps his lost son,
The home its goodman gone,
And all the woeful tale is bruited far and wide.
They pay no more tribute; they bow them no morel
The word of power is not spoken
By the princes of Persia; their day is o'er,
And the laws of the Medes are broken
Through Asia's myriad-peopled land;
For the staff is snapped in the King's right hand.
And a watch is not set on the free, frank tongue,
Y ea,liberty's voice speaks loud;
And the yoke is loosed from the neck that was wrung
And the back to dominion bowed:
For the earth of Ajax isle is red
With the blood of Persia's noble dead I
Enter ATOSSA.
At. Good friends, the heart that hath found
trouble knows
THE PERSIANS
21
That when calamity is at the flood
We shake at shadows; but, if once the tide
Flow fair, and fortune send a prospering wind,
We cannot think that it will change. To me
All prayers I offer now are full of dread,
And voices loud, but not with victory,
Sound in mine ears; so fell a stroke of fortune
Dismays my soul. Therefore am I returned,
Not as oflate with chariots and with pomp;
I bring libations due from son to sire,
Meet for propitiation; gifts that please
Dead bodies in their graves. Milk, white and pure,
And crystal honey cropped from bee-searched
flowers,
And cool cups drawn from virgin founts; and here,
Pressed from wild nature's bosom, is strong wine,
The jocund youngling of an ancient stem;
And I have oil of olive, amber-clear,
Sweet esence of a never-fading tree,
And wreathed blossoms-children all of earth
That yieldeth every fruit. Then, dear my friends,
Accompany with song acceptable
These luscious draughts that soothe the silent dead,
And forth from his sepulchral monument
Call up Darius' spirit. The cup earth drinks
I will pour out to the Gods of the underworld.
Chorus
Queen of Persia, chief in worth,
'Neath the chambers of the earth,
Send thy rich libations streaming;
We with prayers of holy seeming
Will beseech the dead that there
·They may find acceptance fair.
Gods infernal, pure and holy,
Earth and Hermes, melancholy
Lord of death and gloom and night,
Send his soul up to the light.
He will heal-point undismayed
Where grief's far horizons fade.
Peer of the Gods, whose kingl y sta te
Is evermore felicity I
Shifting as the shocks of fate
Sinks and soars our endless cry
Uttered in an ancient tongue:
Hearest thou the shades among?
All ye gOds of souls earth-bound,
Hearken! Earth, break up thy sod I
Grant us sight from thy dark ground
OfSusa's son and Persia's god I
To such an ample spirit ne'er
Persian earth gave sepulchre.
Dear was the man; dear is his burial-mound!
A power sleeps here, whose influence shall not fade!
Oh, where he sits sole King 'mong Kingsdiscrowned,
Aidoneus, dim Aidoneus, speed Darius' shadel
In wantonness of heart he ne'er made war,
Nor lost a world wasting the lives of men;