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;