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Home  »  Poems of Places An Anthology in 31 Volumes  »  The March of Xerxes

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Greece and Turkey in Europe: Vol. XIX. 1876–79.

Turkey in Europe, and the Principalities: Dardanelles (Hellespont)

The March of Xerxes

By Luigi Alamanni (1495–1556)

Translated by Sir Aubrey de Vere

WHEN in the wantonness of kingly pride,

Vain Xerxes spurred his war-horse through the tide,

And bore his fleet o’er mountain-tops,—e’en there

The Eternal bade his evil heart despair:

O’er Hellespont and Athos’ marble head,

More than a god he came, less than a man he fled.