Then, while in streams of soft compassion drown’d, The swains lament, and maidens weep around; While lisping children, touched with infant fear, With wonder gaze, and drop th’ unconscious tear; Oh! then this moral bid their souls retain, ALL THOUGHTS OF HAPPINESS ON EARTH ARE VAIN!” 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; Transfixed he stood, with awful terror filled, While down his cheek the silent drops distilled: “O ill-starred votary of unspotted truth! Untimely perished 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 doomed the orphan child to mourn, 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 shattered rafts and corses of the dead; Three still alive, benumbed 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. THE SHIPWRECK. ELEGY. [Illustration: From young Arion first the news received With terror pale unhappy Anna read, With inconsolable distress she grieved. And from her cheek the rose of beauty fled. DRAWN BY RICHARD WESTALL, R.A. ENGRAVED BY F. ENGLEHEART. PUBLISHED BY JOHN SHARPE, PICCADILLY, OCT. 1, 1819.] OCCASIONAL ELEGY, IN WHICH THE PRECEDING NARRATIVE IS CONCLUDED. The scene of Death is closed! the mournful strains Dissolve in dying languor on the ear; Yet Pity weeps, yet Sympathy complains, And dumb Suspense awaits o’erwhelm’d with fear: But the sad Muses with prophetic eye At once the future and the past explore; Their harps Oblivion’s influence can defy, And waft the spirit to th’ eternal shore—