And blunders on, and staggers every pace. 
  Thus all seek happiness; but few can find. 
  For far the greater part of men are blind. 
  This is my case, who thought our utmost good
  Was in one word of freedom understood: 
  The fatal blessing came:  from prison free, 440
  I starve abroad, and lose the sight of Emily.

    Thus Arcite; but if Arcite thus deplore
  His sufferings, Palamon yet suffers more. 
  For when he knew his rival freed and gone,
  He swells with wrath; he makes outrageous moan: 
  He frets, he fumes, he stares, he stamps the ground;
  The hollow tower with clamours rings around: 
  With briny tears he bathed his fetter’d feet,
  And dropp’d all o’er with agony of sweat. 
  Alas! he cried, I wretch in prison pine, 450
  Too happy rival, while the fruit is thine: 
  Thou livest 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 join’d,
  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 460
  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, 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