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, 470 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, 480 When the good suffer, and the bad prevail? What worse to wretched virtue could befall, If fate or giddy fortune govern'd 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, 490 Not freed when dead, is doom'd to suffer more. A serpent shoots his sting at unaware; An ambush'd thief forelays a traveller: The man lies murder'd, while the thief and snake, One gains the thickets, and one threads 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 quartile, move 500 My pangs of jealousy for Arcite's love. Let Palamon oppress'd in bondage mourn, While to his exiled rival we return. By this, the sun, declining from his height, The day had shorten'd to prolong the night; The lengthen'd night gave length of misery Both to the captive lover and the free. For Palamon in endless prison mourns, And Arcite forfeits life if he returns: The banish'd never hopes his love to see, 510 Nor hopes the captive lord his liberty. 'Tis hard to say who suffers greater pains: One sees his love, but cannot break his chains: One free, and all his motions uncontroll'd, Beholds whate'er he would, but what he would behold. Judge as you please, for I will haste to tell What fortune to the banish'd knight befell.