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 AEmo'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: