480 BC revisited - a unique double

My correspondence with GH, a French classicist, author and polymath has been continuing. I introduced him to pentelopes and we have been firing them back and forth of late.

Having grown up in leafy Warwickshire (think Arden), I started to look for something redolent of Shakespeare but my mind went blank; so, naturally enough, I turned to blank verse. Alack! Vaulting ambition leapt from this already tricky task to approach one still more vainglorious. To end and begin each line in accordance with the pentelope vowel rules. The result is set out below in 480 BC revisited..

Shambling iambic pentameter is held fast by doubled pentelopic punctuation, front and rear. It is of course a prototype, quite incapable of flight, or much else for that matter. I am wondering whether any of my readers will be able to take this ugly duckling and produce a swan, worthy of the Avon.

480 BC revisited

As Spartans form their lines, Leonidas
Espies afar the serried hosts of Xerxes;
Is foretold triumph soon at Salamis,
O Sybil, tribute to heroic loss?
You stand foredoomed, fell sons of Darius...

PB 2018

Battle of Thermopylae.By Cleber.knfire*

NOTE: At the head of a huge army, Xerxes continued his father Darius' war with the Greeks by defeating the Spartans under King Leonidas after a heroic last stand at the Battle of Thermopylae. The anxious Athenians consulted the Sibyl (the Oracle at Delphi), only to learn that Athens was doomed. A second part of the prophecy stated however that 'only the wooden wall will not fail'. The meaning of these mysterious words became clear when the Greek navy defeated the Persians at the Battle of Salamis. The Greek ships proved to be the wooden wall. The Persians withdraw. The war was over.
* [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], from Wikimedia Commons.  https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/94/Thermopilas_Batlle_art.jpg