In Palamon a manly grief appears; Silent he wept, ashamed to show his tears. Emilia shrieked but once; and then, opprest With sorrow, sunk upon her lover's breast: Till Theseus in his arms conveyed with care Far from so sad a sight the swooning fair. 'Twere loss of time her sorrow to relate; Ill bears the sex a youthful lover's fate, When just approaching to the nuptial state: But, like a low-hung cloud, it rains so fast, That all at once it falls, and cannot last. The face of things is changed, and Athens now That laughed so late, becomes the scene of woe. Matrons and maids, both sexes, every state, With tears lament the knight's untimely fate. Not greater grief in falling Troy was seen For Hector's death; but Hector was not then. Old men with dust deformed their hoary hair; The women beat their breasts, their cheeks they tear. "Why wouldst thou go," with one consent they cry, When thou hadst gold enough, and Emily?" Theseus himself, who should have cheered the grief Of others, wanted now the same relief: Old Ægeus only could revive his son, Who various changes of the world had known, And strange vicissitudes of human fate, Still altering, never in a steady state: Good after ill and after pain delight, Alternate, like the scenes of day and night. Since every man who lives is born to die, And none can boast sincere felicity, With equal mind, what happens, let us bear, Nor joy, nor grieve too much for things beyond our care. Like pilgrims to the appointed place we tend; The world's an inn, and death the journey's end. Even kings but play, and when their part is done, Some other, worse or better, mount the throne. With words like these the crowd was satisfied; And so they would have been, had Theseus died. But he, their King, was labouring in his mind A fitting place for funeral pomps to find, Which were in honour of the dead designed. And, after long debate, at last he found (As Love itself had marked the spot of ground,) That grove for ever green, that conscious laund, Where he with Palamon fought hand to hand; That, where he fed his amorous desires With soft complaints, and felt his hottest fires, There other flames might waste his earthly part, And burn his limbs, where love had burned his heart.