“In free debate, my friends, your sentence speak; For me, I move, before the morning break, To raise our camp: too dangerous here our post, Far from Troy walls, and on a naked coast. I deem’d not Greece so dreadful, while engaged In mutual feuds her king and hero raged; Then, while we hoped our armies might prevail We boldly camp’d beside a thousand sail. I dread Pelides now: his rage of mind Not long continues to the shores confined, Nor to the fields, where long in equal fray Contending nations won and lost the day; For Troy, for Troy, shall henceforth be the strife, And the hard contest not for fame, but life. Haste then to Ilion, while the favouring night Detains these terrors, keeps that arm from fight. If but the morrow’s sun behold us here, That arm, those terrors, we shall feel, not fear; And hearts that now disdain, shall leap with joy, If heaven permit them then to enter Troy. Let not my fatal prophecy be true, Nor what I tremble but to think, ensue. Whatever be our fate, yet let us try What force of thought and reason can supply; Let us on counsel for our guard depend; The town her gates and bulwarks shall defend. When morning dawns, our well-appointed powers, Array’d in arms, shall line the lofty towers. Let the fierce hero, then, when fury calls, Vent his mad vengeance on our rocky walls, Or fetch a thousand circles round the plain, Till his spent coursers seek the fleet again: So may his rage be tired, and labour’d down! And dogs shall tear him ere he sack the town.”