The Immortals
by Isaac Rosenberg
   
I killed them, but they would not die.  
Yea! all the day and all the night  
For them I could not rest or sleep,  
Nor guard from them nor hide in flight.  
   
Then in my agony I turned 5
And made my hands red in their gore.  
And still they rose to torture me,  
They rose more cruel than before.  
   
I killed and killed with slaughter mad;  
I killed till all my strength was gone. 10
And still they rose to torture me,  
For Devils only die in fun.  
   
I used to think the Devil hid  
In women’s smiles and wine’s carouse.  
I called him Satan, Balzebub. 15
But now I call him, dirty louse.  
   

The Immortals — Rosenberg takes his title from Herodotus, the ancient Greek historian, who used the name for an elite unit of the Persian Achaemenid Empire (though his use of that word was probably based on a mistranslation). The unit was kept at exactly 10,000 men at all times. Contrary to the movie 300, however, the Persian soldiers who comprised the Immortals were not disfigured freaks who used Japanese(!) armor and weapons.
Satan — In the Old Testament, al-satan is a servant of YHVH who appears in the Book of Job. In Hebrew, al-satan literally means the adversary, and his role in Jewish traditon is that of a kind of prosecuting attorney or devil’s advocate. Early Christan scholars misunderstood the meaning of adversary in this context, associated the al-satan of Job with the serpent of the Eden story (an association not made anywhere in the original texts, and which in fact contradicts them), and then ultimately gave this name to God’s arch-enemy.
 
Balzebub — Also spelled Beelzebub and Baalzebub, this is the name of an ancient Sumerian deity and translates roughly as Lord of the High Place. In more recent times he has been associated with insects, especially flies, and is known as the Lord of the Flies. See the novel of that name.
 
louse — singular form of lice