He frets, he fumes, he stares, he stamps the ground; The hollow tower with clamours rings around: With briny tears he bathed his fettered feet, And dropped all o'er with agony of sweat. Alas! he cried, I, wretch! in prison pine, Too happy rival, while the fruit is thine: Thou liv'st at large, thou draw'st thy native air, Pleased with thy freedom, proud of my despair: Thou may'st, since thou hast youth and courage joined, A sweet behaviour and a solid mind, Assemble ours, and all the Theban race, To vindicate on Athens thy disgrace; And after, by some treaty made, possess Fair Emily, the pledge of lasting peace. So thine shall be the beauteous prize, while I Must languish in despair, in prison die. Thus all the advantage of the strife is thine, Thy portion double joys, and double sorrows mine.-- 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, 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 presence fail, When the good suffer, and the bad prevail? What worse to wretched virtue could befal, If fate or giddy fortune governed 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, Not freed when dead, is doomed to suffer more. A serpent shoots his sting at unaware; An ambushed thief forelays a traveller; The man lies murdered, while the thief and snake, One gains the thickets, and one thrids 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 quartil, move My pangs of jealousy for Arcite's love.-- Let Palamon oppressed in bondage mourn, While to his exiled rival we return. By this, the sun, declining from his height, The day had shortened to prolong the night: The lengthened 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 banished never hopes his love to see,