To course that long, unknown, eternal road-- O sacred source of ever-living light! Conduct the weary wanderer in her flight; Direct her onward to that peaceful shore, Where peril, pain, and death prevail no more. "When thou some tale of hapless love shalt hear, That steals from pity's eye the melting tear; 870 Of two chaste hearts, by mutual passion join'd, To absence, sorrow, and despair consign'd; Oh! then, to swell the tides of social woe That heal the afflicted bosom they o'erflow, While memory dictates, this sad shipwreck tell, And what distress thy wretched friend befell: Then, while in streams of soft compassion drown'd, The swains lament, and maidens weeps around; While lisping children, touch'd with infant fear, With wonder gaze, and drop the unconscious tear; 880 Oh! then this moral bid their souls retain, All thoughts of happiness on earth are vain!" [6] The last faint accents trembled on his tongue, That now inactive to the palate clung; His bosom heaves a mortal groan--he dies! And shades eternal sink upon his eyes. As thus defaced in death Palemon lay, Arion gazed upon the lifeless clay; Transfix'd he stood, with awful terror fill'd, While down his cheek the silent drops distill'd: 890 "O ill-starr'd votary of unspotted truth! Untimely perish'd in the bloom of youth; Should e'er thy friend arrive on Albion's land, He will obey, though painful, thy command; His tongue the dreadful story shall display, And all the horrors of this dismal day: Disastrous day! what ruin hast thou bred, What anguish to the living and the dead! How hast thou left the widow all forlorn; And ever doom'd the orphan child to mourn, 900 Through life's sad journey hopeless to complain! Can sacred justice these events ordain? But, O my soul! avoid that wondrous maze, Where reason, lost in endless error, strays; As through this thorny vale of life we run, Great Cause of all effects, thy will be done!" Now had the Grecians on the beach arrived, To aid the helpless few who yet survived: While passing, they behold the waves o'erspread With shatter'd rafts and corses of the dead; 910 Three still alive, benumb'd and faint they find, In mournful silence on a rock reclined: The generous natives, moved with social pain, The feeble strangers in their arms sustain; With pitying sighs their hapless lot deplore, And lead them trembling from the fatal shore. [Footnote 1: 'Steady:' the order to steer the ship according to the line on which she advances at that instant, without deviating to the right or left thereof.]