LXXII. "Then Priam, though hemmed with death on every side, Spared not his utterance, nor his wrath controlled; 'To thee, yea, thee, fierce miscreant,' he cried, 'May Heaven,--if Heaven with righteous eyes behold So foul an outrage and a deed so bold, Ne'er fail a fitting guerdon to ordain, Nor worthy quittance for thy crime withhold, Whose hand hath made me see my darling slain, And dared with filial blood a father's eyes profane. LXXIII. "'Not so Achilles, whom thy lying tongue Would feign thy father; like a foeman brave, He scorned a suppliant's rights and trust to wrong, And sent me home in safety,--ay, and gave My Hector's lifeless body to the grave.' The old man spoke and, with a feeble throw, At Pyrrhus with a harmless dart he drave. The jarring metal blunts it, and below The shield-boss, down it hangs, and foils the purposed blow. LXXIV. "'Go then,' cries Pyrrhus, 'with thy tale of woe To dead Pelides, and thy plaints outpour. To him, my father, in the shades below, These deeds of his degenerate son deplore; Now die!'--So speaking, to the shrine he tore The aged Priam, trembling with affright, And feebly sliding in his son's warm gore. The left hand twists his hoary locks; the right Deep in his side drives home the falchion, bared and bright. LXXV. "Such close had Priam's fortunes; so his days Were finished, such the bitter end he found, Now doomed by Fate with dying eyes to gaze On Troy in flames and ruin all around, And Pergamus laid level with the ground. Lo, he to whom once Asia bowed the knee, Proud lord of many peoples, far-renowned, Now left to welter by the rolling sea, A huge and headless trunk, a nameless corpse is he. LXXVI. "Grim horror seized me, and aghast I stood. Uprose the image of my father dear, As there I see the monarch, bathed in blood, Like him in prowess and in age his peer. Uprose Creusa, desolate and drear, Iulus' peril, and a plundered home. I look around for comrades; none are near. Some o'er the battlements leapt headlong, some Sank fainting in the flames; the final hour was come. LXXVII. "I stood alone, when lo, in Vesta's fane I see Tyndarean Helen, crouching down. Bright shone the blaze around me, as in vain I tracked my comrades through the burning town. There, mute, and, as the traitress deemed, unknown, Dreading the Danaan's vengeance, and the sword Of Trojans, wroth for Pergamus o'erthrown, Dreading the anger of her injured lord, Sat Troy's and Argos' fiend, twice hateful and abhorred.