This was last progress of this mighty Queen,
Who in her Country never more was seen.
The Poets feign'd her turn'd into a Dove,
Leaving the world to Venus soar'd above:
Which made the Assyrians many a day,
A Dove within their Ensigns to display:"[1]
Now, Raleigh says:—
"But of what multitude soever the army of Semiramis consisted, the same being broken and overthrown by Staurobates upon the banks of Indus, canticum cantavit extremum, she sang her last song; and (as antiquity hath feigned) was changed by the gods into a dove; (the bird of Venus;) whence it came that the Babylonians gave a dove in their ensigns."[2]
She says of Xerxe :—
"He with his Crown receives a double war,
The Egyptians to reduce, and Greece to marr,
The first begun, and finish'd in such haste,
None write by whom, nor how, 'twas over past.
But for the last, he made such preparation,
As if to dust, he meant, to grinde that nation;
Yet all his men, and Instruments of slaughter,
Produced but derision and laughter."[3]
Raleigh has the same in these words:—
"Xerxes received from his father, as hereditary, a double war, one to be made against the Egyptians, which he finished so speedily that there is nothing remaining in writing how the same was performed; the other against the Grecians, of which it is hard to judge whether the preparations were more terrible, or the success, ridiculous."[4]
