“But you, oh Grecian chiefs, reward my care, Be grateful to your watchman of the war: For all my labours in so long a space, Sure I may plead a title to your grace: Enter the town; I then unbarr’d the gates, When I removed their tutelary fates. By all our common hopes, if hopes they be Which I have now reduced to certainty; By falling Troy, by yonder tottering towers, And by their taken gods, which now are ours; Or if there yet a farther task remains, To be perform’d by prudence, or by pains; If yet some desperate action rests behind, That asks high conduct, and a dauntless mind; If aught be wanting to the Trojan doom, Which none but I can manage and o’ercome, Award those arms I ask, by your decree: Or give to this, what you refuse to me.”

He ceased: and ceasing, with respect he bow’d, And with his hand at once the fatal statue show’d. Heaven, air, and ocean, rung with loud applause, And by the general vote he gain’d his cause. Thus conduct won the prize, when courage fail’d, And eloquence o’er brutal force prevail’d.

Ajax, in despair, puts a period to his existence, and the blood of the hero is changed into a hyacinth.

He who could often, and alone, withstand The foe, the fire, and Jove’s own partial hand, Now cannot his unmaster’d grief sustain, But yields to rage, to madness, and disdain; Then snatching out his falchion, “Thou,” said he, “Art mine; Ulysses lays no claim to thee. Oh often tried, and ever-trusty sword, Now do thy last kind office to thy lord: ’Tis Ajax who requests thy aid, to show None but himself himself could overthrow:” He said, and with so good a will to die, Did to his breast the fatal point apply. It found his heart, a way till then unknown, Where never weapon enter’d but his own. No hands could force it thence, so fix’d it stood, Till out it rush’d, expell’d by streams of spouting blood. The fruitful blood produced a flower, which grew On a green stem, and of a purple hue: Like his, whom unaware Apollo slew: Inscribed in both, the letters are the same, But those express the grief, and these the name.

Polyxena, the daughter of Priam, is sacrificed at the tomb of Achilles, while her brother Polydore, by his great riches, excites the avarice of Polymestor, king of Thrace, who murders him⁠—The lifeless body of her son is discovered by Hecuba, who contrives to deprive the faithless monarch of his eyes⁠—His subjects pursue her with darts and stones, when she if metamorphosed into a bitch.

The victor with full sails for Lemnos stood, (Once stain’d by matrons with their husbands’ blood,) Thence great Alcides’ fatal shafts to bear, Assign’d to Philoctetes’ secret care. These with their guardian to the Greeks convey’d, Their ten years’ toil with wish’d success repaid. With Troy old Priam falls: his queen survives; Till all her woes complete, transform’d she grieves In borrow’d sounds, nor with a human face, Barking tremendous o’er the plains of Thrace. Still Ilium’s flames their pointed columns raise, And the red Hellespont reflects the blaze. Shed on Jove’s altar are the poor remains Of blood, which trickled from old Priam’s veins. Cassandra lifts her hands to heaven in vain, Dragg’d by her sacred hair; the trembling train Of matrons to their burning temples fly: There to their gods for kind protection cry; And to their statues cling till forced away, The victor Greeks bear off the invidious prey. From those high towers Astyanax is thrown, Whence he was wont with pleasure to look down, When oft his mother with a fond delight Pointed to view his fathers rage in fight, To win renown, and guard his country’s right.