P. Vergilius Maro, Aeneid
John Dryden, Ed.

Meantime the Trojan sends his troops ashore:
Some are by boats expos'd, by bridges more.
With lab'ring oars they bear along the strand,
Where the tide languishes, and leap aland.
Tarchon observes the coast with careful eyes,
And, where no ford he finds, no water fries,
Nor billows with unequal murmurs roar,
But smoothly slide along, and swell the shore,
That course he steer'd, and thus he gave command:
“Here ply your oars, and at all hazard land:
Force on the vessel, that her keel may wound
This hated soil, and furrow hostile ground.
Let me securely land—I ask no more;
Then sink my ships, or shatter on the shore.”

This fiery speech inflames his fearful friends:
They tug at ev'ry oar, and ev'ry stretcher bends;
They run their ships aground; the vessels knock,
(Thus forc'd ashore,) and tremble with the shock.
Tarchon's alone was lost, that stranded stood,
Stuck on a bank, and beaten by the flood:
She breaks her back; the loosen'd sides give way,
And plunge the Tuscan soldiers in the sea.
Their broken oars and floating planks withstand
Their passage, while they labor to the land,
And ebbing tides bear back upon th' uncertain sand.