Oh horror, horror, what a train of ills!
Alas! Is Hellas then unscathed? And has
Our arrowy tempest spent its force in vain?
Raise the funereal cry--with dismal notes
Wailing the wretched Persians. Oh, how ill
They planned their measures! All their army perished!

Then the messenger exclaims:

I speak not from report; but these mine eyes
Beheld the ruin which my tongue would utter.
In heaps the unhappy dead lie on the strand
Of Salamis, and all the neighboring shores.
Oh, Salamis--how hateful is thy name!
Oh, how my heart groans but to think of Athens!

Atossa at length finds words to say:

Astonished with these ills, my voice thus long
Hath wanted utterance: griefs like these exceed
The power of speech or question: yet e'en such,
Inflicted by the gods, must mortal man,
Constrained by loud necessity endure.
But tell me all: without distraction, tell me
All this calamity, though many a groan
Burst from thy laboring heart. Who is not fallen?
What leader must we wail? What sceptred chief,
Dying, hath left his troops without a lord?

The messenger tells her that Xerxes himself lives, and still