Thus Arcite: but if Arcite thus deplore His sufferings, Palamon yet suffers more. For when he knew his rival freed and gone, He swells with wrath; he makes outrageous moan; He frets, he fumes, he stares, he stamps the ground; The hollow tower with clamours rings around: With briny tears he bathed his fettered feet, And dropped all o'er with agony of sweat. "Alas!" he cried, "I, wretch, in prison pine, Too happy rival, while the fruit is thine: Thou livest at large, thou drawest thy native air, Pleased with thy freedom, proud of my despair: Thou mayest, since thou hast youth and courage joined, A sweet behaviour and a solid mind, Assemble ours, and all the Theban race, To vindicate on Athens thy disgrace; And after (by some treaty made) possess Fair Emily, the pledge of lasting peace. So thine shall be the beauteous prize, while I Must languish in despair, in prison die. Thus all the advantage of the strife is thine, Thy portion double joys, and double sorrows mine." The rage of jealousy then fired his soul, And his face kindled like a burning coal Now cold despair, succeeding in her stead, To livid paleness turns the glowing red. His blood, scarce liquid, creeps within his veins, Like water which the freezing wind constrains. Then thus he said: "Eternal Deities, "Who rule the world with absolute decrees, And write whatever time shall bring to pass With pens of adamant on plates of brass; What is the race of human kind your care Beyond what all his fellow-creatures are? He with the rest is liable to pain, And like the sheep, his brother-beast, is slain. Cold, hunger, prisons, ills without a cure, All these he must, and guiltless oft, endure; Or does your justice, power, or prescience fail, When the good suffer and the bad prevail? What worse to wretched virtue could befal, If Fate or giddy Fortune governed all? Nay, worse than other beasts is our estate: Them, to pursue their pleasures, you create; We, bound by harder laws, must curb our will, And your commands, not our desires, fulfil: Then, when the creature is unjustly slain, Yet, after death at least, he feels no pain; But man in life surcharged with woe before, Not freed when dead, is doomed to suffer more. A serpent shoots his sting at unaware; An ambushed thief forelays a traveller; The man lies murdered, while the thief and snake, One gains the thickets, and one thrids the brake. This let divines decide; but well I know, Just or unjust, I have my share of woe, Through Saturn seated in a luckless place, And Juno's wrath that persecutes my race; Or Mars and Venus in a quartil, move My pangs of jealousy for Arcite's love."