He struck him right where the midriff packs the pounding heart
and down Sarpedon fell as an oak or white poplar falls
or towering pine that shipwrights up on a mountain
hew down with whetted axes for sturdy ship timber –
so he stretched in front of his team and chariot,
sprawled and roaring, clawing the bloody dust.
– Homer
The Iliad, Book 16, lines 569-574. Sarpedon, struck and killed by Patroclus’s spear, is described in an epic simile as falling down like a big tree axed by shipwrights for ship timber.