Then climb slow up the beach with hands and feet. O Heaven! delivered by whose sovereign hand Still on destruction’s brink they shuddering stand, Receive the languid incense they bestow, That, damp with death, appears not yet to glow; To THEE each soul the warm oblation pays With trembling ardour of unequal praise; In every heart dismay with wonder strives, And hope the sickened spark of life revives, Her magic powers their exiled health restore, Till horror and despair are felt no more. Roused by the blustering tempest of the night, A troop of Grecians mount Colonna’s height; When, gazing down with horror on the flood, Full to their view the scene of ruin stood— The surf with mangled bodies strewed around, And those yet breathing on the sea-washed ground: Though lost to science and the nobler arts, Yet Nature’s lore informed their feeling hearts; Straight down the vale with hastening steps they hied, Th’ unhappy sufferers to assist, and guide. Meanwhile, those three escaped, beneath explore The first advent’rous youth who reached the shore: Panting, with eyes averted from the day, Prone, helpless, on the tangly beach he lay. It is Palemon! oh, what tumults roll With hope and terror in Arion’s soul; ‘If yet unhurt he lives again to view His friend, and this sole remnant of our crew, With us to travel through this foreign zone, And share the future good or ill unknown?’ Arion thus; but ah, sad doom of Fate! That bleeding Memory sorrows to relate; While yet afloat, on some resisting rock His ribs were dashed, and fractured with the shock: Heart-piercing sight! those cheeks so late array’d In beauty’s bloom, are pale with mortal shade; Distilling blood his lovely breast o’erspread, And clogged the golden tresses of his head: Nor yet the lungs by this pernicious stroke Were wounded, or the vocal organs broke. Down from his neck, with blazing gems arrayed, Thy image, lovely Anna! hung portrayed; Th’ unconscious figure, smiling all serene, Suspended in a golden chain was seen: Hadst thou, soft maiden! in this hour of woe Beheld him writhing from the deadly blow, What force of art, what language could express Thine agony, thine exquisite distress? But thou, alas! art doomed to weep in vain For him thine eyes shall never see again. With dumb amazement pale, Arion gazed, And cautiously the wounded youth upraised; Palemon then, with equal pangs opprest, In faltering accents thus his friend addrest: “O rescued from destruction late so nigh, Beneath whose fatal influence doomed I lie; Are we then, exiled to this last retreat Of life, unhappy! thus decreed to meet? Ah! how unlike what yester-morn enjoyed, Enchanting hopes! for ever now destroyed; For wounded, far beyond all healing power,