The sword shall plead our cause, for to us all
    Does equal guilt, and equal danger, call: 
    Oblig’d by you I conquer’d, not alone. 
    Since to be punisht is the victor’s crown,
    Fortune invokt begin the offer’d war,
    My cause is pleaded when you bravely dare,
    With such an army, who success can fear. 
    Thus Caesar spoke:  from the propitious sky
    Descending eagles, boding victory,
    Drive the slow winds before ’em as they fly. 
    From the left side of a dark wood proceed
    Unwonted crys, which dying, flames succeed. 
    The sun-beams with unusual brightness rise
    And spread new glories round the gilded skies. 
    New fir’d with omens of the promis’d day,
    Caesar o’re untrod mountain leads the way;
    Where th’ frozen earth o’re-clad with ice and snows,
    At first not yielding to their horses blows,
    A dreadful quiet in dull stiffness shows. 
    But when their trembling hoofs had burst the chain,
    And soften’d milky clouds of hardned rain;
    So quick the melted snows to rivers run,
    That soon a deluge from the mountains sprung. 
    But thus you’d think ’twere done by fates decrees,
    For the flood stopt, and billows rising freeze,
    And yielding waves but now are rocks of ice. 
    The slippery passage now their feet betray,
    When soon in miserable heaps o’ th’ way,
    Men, horse, arms, in wild confusion lay. 
    Now pregnant clouds, with whirling blasts are torn,
    And, bursting, are deliver’d of a storm: 
    Large stones of hail the troubl’d heavens shoot,
    That by tempestuous winds are whirl’d about;
    So thick it pours, whole clouds of snow and hail,
    Like frozen billows, on their armour fall: 
    The earth lay vanquished under mighty snow,
    An icy damp the vanquisht heavens know,
    And vanquisht waters now no longer flow. 
    Thus all but Caesar yield; on his huge lance
    The hero leaning, did secure advance. 
    Alcmena’s son did less securely rush,
    From the proud height of rising Caucasus;
    Or Jove himself, when down the steep he prest
    Those sons of earth, that durst his heaven molest. 
    While raging Caesar scales th’ aspiring height,
    Big with the news, fame takes before her flight;
    And from Mount Palatine approaching ills,
    To frighted Rome, thus dreadfully she tells: 
    A numerous fleet is riding o’er the main,
    The melted Alps are hid with Caesar’s train. 
    That reeking from a German conquest come,
    And with a like destruction threaten Rome. 
    Now arms, blood, death, and dismal scenes of war,
    Are to their eyes presented by their fear;
    With dreadful thoughts of coming war possest,
    A wilder tumult raigns in every breast. 
    This flys by land, and that the sea prefers,
    And thinks his native soil