Sentence:  How shall I omit those ungardenlike gardens, void of pot-herbs? or the Augean store, which we cleared out and spread over them; what time we worked the hillside plough, vine-planter I, and awful you, with this neck and hands, which still bear the marks of the toil (O earth and sun, air and virtue! for I will <WSD>tragicize</WSD> a bit), not the Hellespont to yoke, but to level the steep. 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  To speak or write in the manner of a tragedy; to adopt a grandiloquent style.