5

There I am wont to sit, when any chance
Relieves me from my task of servile toil,
Daily' in the common prison else injoin'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 heav'n fresh blowing, pure and sweet, 10
With day-spring born; here leave me to respire.
This day a solemn feast the people hold

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 seek
This unfrequented place to find some ease,
Ease to the body some, none to the mind
From restless thoughts, that like a deadly swarm
Of hornets arm'd, no sooner found alone,
But rush upon me thronging, and present
Times past, what once I was, and what am now.
O wherefore was my birth from heav'n foretold
Twice by an angel, who at last in sight
Of both my parents all in flames ascended
From off the altar, where an offering burn'd,
As in a fiery column charioting

thought the same in the two pieces, and I am sure the Greek tragedy can have no pretence to be esteemed better, but only because it is two thousand years older.

13. To Dagon their sea-idol,] For Milton both here and in the Paradise Lost follows the opinion of those, who describe this idol

15

20

25

as part man, part fish, i. 462. Dagon his name, sea monster, upward man

And downward fish.

24. Twice by an angel,] Once to his mother, and again to his father Manoah and his mother both, and the second time the angel ascended in the flame of the altar. Judges xiii. 3, 11, 20.

His god-like 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

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With this heav'n-gifted strength? O glorious strength
Put to the labour of a beast, debas'd
Lower than bondslave! promise was that I
Should Israel from Philistine 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 default,
Whom have I to complain of but myself?
Who this high gift of strength committed to me,

28. —and from some great act,] Mr. Sympson says that the true reading is

-as from some great act; but the poet would hardly say As in a fiery column &c. as from some great act &c; and therefore we may retain and, and as may be understood though not expressed, As in a fiery column charioting &c. and as from some great act &c.

33. Betray'd, captiv'd,] It should be pronounced with the accent upon the last syllable, as afterwards, ver. 694.

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40

45

To dogs and fowls a prey, or else captiv'd.

I think we commonly pronounce
it with the accent upon the first
syllable captiv'd: but our old au-
thors give it the same pronuncia-

tion as Milton. Spenser, Faery
Queen, b. ii. cant. iv. st. 16.
Thus when as Guyon Furor had
captiv'd:

and b. iii. cant. i. st. 2.

But the captiv'd Acrasia he sent : and Fairfax, cant. xix. s. 95.

Free was Erminia, but captiv'd her heart.

In what part lodg'd, how easily bereft 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!

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55

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 apart
Would ask a life to wail, but chief of all,
O 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,

53. But what is strength without
a double share

Of wisdom, &c.] Ovid, Met. xiii. 363.

Tu vires sine mente geris

-tu tantum corpore prodes,

60

65

70

69. or decrepit age!] So it is printed in the first edition; the later editors have omitted or, concluding I suppose that it made the verse a syllable too long. Mr. Calton proposes to

Nos animo; quantoque ratem qui read temperat &c.

Hor. Od. iii. iv. 65.

Jortin.

Vis consill expers mole ruit sua.
Richardson.

-beggary in decrepit age! Want joined to the weaknesses of helpless age, says he, would render it a very real misery.

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 pow'r 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 bereav'd 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.

87. And silent as the moon, &c.] There cannot be a better note on this passage than what Mr. Warburton has written on this verse of Shakespeare, 2 Henry VI. act i. sc. 8.

Deep night, dark night, the silent of the night. The silent of the night is a classical expression, and means an interlunar night-amica silentia luna. So Pliny, Inter omnes verò convenit, utilissime in coitu ejus sterni, quem diem alii interlunii, alii silentis lunæ appellant. lib. xvi. cap. 39. In imitation of this language, Milton says,

VOL. III.

The sun to me is dark,
And silent as the moon,
When she deserts the night
Hid in her vacant interlunar cave.

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85

89. Hid in her vacant interlunar cave.] Silens luna is the moon at or near the change, and in conjunction with the sun. Plin. i. lib. xvi. c. 89. The interlunar cave is here called vacant, quia luna ibi vacat opere et ministerio suo, because the moon is idle, and useless, and makes no return of light. Meadow court.

Alluding, I suppose, to the same notion, which he has a

R

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 the sight
To such a tender ball as th' eye confin'd,

90

So obvious and so easy to be quench'd?

95

And not as feeling through all parts diffus'd,

That she might look at will through every pore?

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

Where light and darkness in per-
petual round

Lodge and dislodge by turns.
See the note on this place. Thyer.

90. Since light so necessary is to life, &c.] This intermixing of his philosophy very much weakens the force and pathos of Samson's complaint, which in the main is excellent, but I think not altogether so fine as the poet's lamentation of his own blindness at the beginning of the third book of the Paradise Lost; so much better does every body write from his own feeling and experience, than when he imagines only what another would -say upon the same occasion.

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