As sure they will, barbarian, sure they must, If there be gods in heaven, and gods be just-- Who tak'st in wrongs an insolent delight; With a son's death to infect a father's sight. Not he, whom thou and lying fame conspire To call thee his--not he, thy vaunted sire, Thus used my wretched age: the gods he feared, The laws of nature and of nations heard. He cheered my sorrows, and, for sums of gold, The bloodless carcase of my Hector sold; Pitied the woes a parent underwent, And sent me back in safety from his tent." This said, his feeble hand a javelin threw, Which, fluttering, seemed to loiter as it flew: Just, and but barely, to the mark it held, And faintly tinkled on the brazen shield. Then Pyrrhus thus: "Go thou from me to fate, And to my father my foul deeds relate. Now die!"--With that he dragged the trembling sire, Sliddering through clottered blood and holy mire, (The mingled paste his murdered son had made,) } Hauled from beneath the violated shade, } And on the sacred pile the royal victim laid. } His right hand held his bloody faulchion bare, His left he twisted in his hoary hair; Then, with a speeding thrust, his heart he found; } The lukewarm blood came rushing through the wound, } And sanguine streams distained the sacred ground. } Thus Priam fell, and shared one common fate With Troy in ashes, and his ruined state-- He, who the sceptre of all Asia swayed, Whom monarchs like domestic slaves obeyed. On the bleak shore now lies the abandoned king, A headless carcase, and a nameless thing. Then, not before, I felt my cruddled blood Congeal with fear, my hair with horror stood: My father's image filled my pious mind, Lest equal years might equal fortune find. Again I thought on my forsaken wife, And trembled for my son's abandoned life. I looked about, but found myself alone, Deserted at my need! My friends were gone. Some spent with toil, some with despair oppressed, Leaped headlong from the heights; the flames consumed the rest. Thus wandering in my way without a guide, The graceless Helen in the porch I spied Of Vesta's temple; there she lurked alone; Muffled she sate, and, what she could, unknown: But, by the flames that cast their blaze around, That common bane of Greece and Troy I found. For Ilium burnt, she dreads the Trojan sword; } More dreads the vengeance of her injured lord; } Even by those gods, who refuged her, abhorred. } Trembling with rage, the strumpet I regard, Resolved to give her guilt the due reward. "Shall she triumphant sail before the wind, And leave in flames unhappy Troy behind? Shall she her kingdom and her friends review, In state attended with a captive crew, While unrevenged the good old Priam falls, And Grecian fires consume the Trojan walls?