Black o'er the waves his burdened vessels sweep,
For Greece elate the warlike squadrons fly:
Now crushed, and whelmed beneath the indignant deep,
The shattered wrecks and lifeless heroes lie;
Whilst from the arms of Greece escaped, with toil
The unsheltered monarch roams o'er Thracia's dreary soil."
And they lament for power overthrown, so many nobles and rulers lost, not without implying that the power of Xerxes himself is shaken, and "his regal greatness is no more."
Atossa returns: this time she comes without her queenly train, and bears the offerings which are to call Darius from the dead. The list of them is graceful and pathetic. We may notice here again how Æschylus shares with other great poets the power of moving us by these simple things; they are like Perdita's flowers, or the offerings "to deck the laureate hearse where Lycid lies."
"Delicious milk that foams
White from the sacred heifer; liquid honey,
Extract of flowers; and from its virgin fount
The running crystal: this pure draught, that flowed
From the ancient vine, of power to bathe the spirits
In joy; the yellow olive's fragrant fruit,
That glories in its leaves' unfading verdure;
With flowers of various hues, earth's fairest off'spring,
Enwreathed."
The Chorus join to hers their prayers to Darius, and entreat the powers that rule the dead, and earth, and heaven, to send up his ghost into the light, that
