The Scene, before the Prison in Gaza.
Samson. Attendant leading him.
A LITTLE onward lend thy guiding hand!
To these dark steps, a little further on;
For yonder bank hath choice of sun or shades
There I am wont to sit, when any chance
Relieves me from my task of servile toil,
Daily in the common prison else enjoin'd me..
Where I, a prisoner chain'd, scarce freely draw
The air imprison'd also, close and damp,
Unwholesome draught: but here I feel amends,
The breath of heaven fresh blowing, pure and t
With day-spring born; here leave me to respire.
This day a solemn feast the people holds to m
To Dagon their sea-idol, and forbid
Laborious works; unwillingly this rest
Their superstition yields me; hence with leave
Retiring from the popular noise, I seska m
This unfrequented place to find some ease, γά
Ease to the body some, none to the mindine от
From restless thoughts, that, like a deadly swarnt
Of hornets arm'd, no sooner found alone, he wh
But rush upon me thronging, and presentarse al
Times past, what once I was, and what am now.. 17
(), wherefore was my birth from heaven foreteld...if
Twice by an angel, who at last in sight 11
Of both my parents all in flames ascendedor 12.
From off the altar, where an offering burn dyn
As in a fiery column charioting
His godlike presence, and from some great act
Or benefit reveal'd to Abraham's race?
Why was my breeding order'd and prescrib'd
As of a person separate to God,
Design'd for great exploits; if I must die,
Betray'd, captiv'd, and both my eyes put out,
Made of my enemies the scorn and gaze;
To grind in brazen fetters under task [strength,
With this heaven-gifted strength? O gloriou
Put to the labour of a beast, debas'd
Lower than bond-slave! Promise was, that
Should Israel from Philistian yoke deliver;
Ask for this great deliverer now, and find him
Eyeless in Gaza at the mill with slaves,
Himself in bonds under Philistian yoke.
Yet stay, let me not rashly call in doubt
Divine prediction; what if all foretold
Had been fulfill'd but through mine own defaul.
Whom have I to complain of but myself?
Who this high gift of strength committed to me
In what part lodg'd, how easily beroft me,
Under the seal of silence could not keep,
But weakly to a woman must reveal it,
O'ercome with importunity and tears.
O impotence of mind, in body strong!
But what is strength without a double share
Of wisdom! vast, unwieldy, burdensome,
Proudly secure, yet liable to fall
By weakest subtleties, not made to rule,
But to subserve where wisdom bears command.
God, when he gave me strength, to show withal
How slight the gift was, hung it in my hair.
But peace! I must not quarrel with the will
Of highest dispensation, which herein
Haply had ends above my reach to know:
Suffices that to me strength is my bane,
And proves the source of all my miseries :
So many, and so huge that each apar
Would ask a life to wail; but chief of all,
(loss of sight, of thee I most complain !
Blind among enemies, O worse than chains,
Dungeon, or beggary, or decrepit age!
Light, the prime work of God, to me is extinct,
And all her various objects of delight
Annull'd, which might in part my grief have eas d
Inferior to the vilest now become
Of man or worm; the vilest here excel me:
They creep, yet see; I, dark in light, expos'd
To daily fraud, contempt, abuse, and wrong,
Within doors. or without, still as a fool,
In power of others, never in my own;
Scarce half I seem to live, dead more than half.
O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon,
Irrecoverably dark, total eclipse
Without all hope of day!
O first-created beam, and thou great Word,
"Let there be light, and light was over all;"
Why am I thus bereawd thy prime decree?
The sun to me is dark
And silent as the moon,
When she deserts the night,
Hid in her vacant interlunar cave.
Since light so necessary is to life,
And almost life itself, if it be true
That light is in the soul,
She all in every part; why was this sight
To such a tender ball as the eye confin'd,
So obvious and so easy to be quench'd ?
And not, as feeling, through all parts diffus'd,
That she might look at will through every pore P
Then had I not been thus exil'd from light,
As in the land of darkness, yet in light,
To live a life half dead, a living death,
And buried; but O, yet more miserable
Myself my sepulchre, a moving grave
Buried, yet not exempt,
By privilege of death and burial,
From worst of other evils, pains and wrongss
But made hereby obnoxious more
To all the miseries of life,
Life in captivity
Among inhuman foes.
But who are these? for with joint pace I hear
The tread of many feet steering this way;
Perhaps my enemies, who come to stare
At my affliction, and perhaps to insult,
Their daily practice to afflict me more.
Chor. This, this is he: softly a while,
Let us not break in upon him:
O change beyond report, thought or belief!
See how he lies at random, carelessly diffus'd,
With languish'd head unpropt.
As one past hope abandon'd,
And by himself given over;
In slavish habit, ill-fitted weeds
O'er-worn and soil'd;
Or do my eyes misrepresent? Can this be he,
That heroic, that renown'd,
Irresistible Samson? whom unarm'd
No strength of man, or fiercest wild beast, coud
Who tore the lion, as the lion tears the kids
Ran on embattled armies clad in iron;
And, weaponless himself,
Made arms ridiculous, useless the forgery
Of brazen shield and spear, the hammer'd cuirass,
Chalybean temper'd steel, and frock of mail
Adamantéan proof?
But safest he who stood aloof,
When insupportably his foot advanced,
In scorn of their proud arms and warlike tools, Spurn'd them to death by troops. The bold Asca
Their ulated backs under his heel;
Or grovelling, soil'd their crested helmets in the
Then with what trivial weapon came to hand,
The jaw of a dead ass, his sword of bone,
A thousand fore-skins fell, the flower of Palestine,
Ramath-lechi, famous to this day.
Then by main force pull'd up, and on his shoulders The gates of Azza, post, and massy bar,
Up to the hill by Hebron, seat of giants old,
No journey of a Sabbath-day; and loaded so,
Like whom the Gentiles feign to bear up heaven.
Which shall I first bewail,
Thy bondage or lost sight,
Prison within prison
Inseparably dark ?
Thou art become (O worst imprisonment !)
The dungeon of thyself; thy soul,
(Which men enjoying sight oft without cause com
Imprison'd now indeed,
In real darkness of the body dwells,
Shut up from outward light
To incorporate with gloomy night;
For inward light, alas!
Puts forth no visual beam.
O mirror of our five state,
Since man on earth unparallel'd
The rarer thy example stands,
By how much from the top of wondrous glory,
Strongest of mortal men,
To lowest pitch of abject fortune thou art fallen
For him I reckon not in high estate
Whom long descent of birth,
Or the sphere of fortune, raises ;
But thee whose strength, while virtue was her Might have subdued the earth,
Universally crown'd with highest praises. (the air Sams. I hear the sound of words; their sense Dissolves unjointed ere it reach my ear.
Chor. He speaks, let us draw nigh. Matchless The glory late of Israel, now the grief; [in might, We come, thy friends and neighbours not un
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