Laborious works; unwillingly this rest Their superstition yields me; hence with leave Of both my parents all in flames ascended His god-like presence, and from some great act Designed for great exploits; if I must die To grind in brazen fetters under task With this Heaven-gifted strength? O glorious strength Lower than bondslave! Promise was that I Had been fulfilled but through mine own default, By weakest subtleties, not made to rule, But to subserve where wisdom bears command! God, when he gave me strength, to show withal Light, the prime work of God, to me is extinct, Annulled, which might in part my grief have eased, Of man or worm; the vilest here excel me; Without all hope of day! O first created beam, and thou great Word, And silent as the moon, When she deserts the night, Hid in her vacant interlunar cave.1 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 1 Perhaps, as Thyer observes, alluding to the notion which our poet has adopted from Hesiod, in Paradise Lost, vi. 4: "There is a cave Within the mount of God, fast by his throne, Where light and darkness in perpetual round Lodge and dislodge by turns.' And not as feeling through all parts diffused, By privilege of death and burial From worst of other evils, pains and wrongs, To all the miseries of life, Life in captivity Among inhuman foes. But who are these? for with joint pace I hear CHORUS. This, this is he; softly awhile, Let us not break in upon him: Oh, change beyond report, thought, or belief! As one past hope, abandoned, And by himself given over; In slavish habit, ill-fitted weeds Or do my eyes misrepresent? Can this be he, That heroic, that renowned, Irresistible Samson? whom unarmed No strength of man, or fiercest wild beast could withstand; Who tore the lion, as the lion tears the kid; Ran on embattled armies clad in iron, And weaponless himself; Made arms ridiculous, useless the forgery Of brazen shield and spear, the hammered cuirass, Adamantean proof; But safest he who stood aloof, 1 Poured, stretched out. 2 So called from the Chalybes, who were famous for their skill in tempering steel When insupportably his foot advanced,1 Or grovelling soiled their crested helmets in the dust. The jaw of a dead ass, his sword of bone, A thousand foreskins fell, the flower of Palestine, In Ramath-lechi2 famous to this day. Then by main force pulled up, and on his shoulders bore The gates of Azza, post,3 and massy bar, Up to the hill by Hebron, seat of giants old,4 No journey of a sabbath-day," and loaded so; Like whom the Gentiles feign to bear up Heaven Thy bondage or lost sight, Prison within prison, Inseparably dark? Thou art become (oh, worst imprisonment !) The dungeon of thyself; thy soul (Which men enjoying sight oft without cause complain) Imprisoned 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 fickle state, Since man on earth unparalleled! The rarer thy example stands, By how much from the top of wondrous glory, Strongest of mortal men, To lowest pitch of a ject fortune thou art fallen. 1 For this nervous expression Milton was probably indebted tc Spenser, F. Q. i. 7, 11 :— "That when the knight he spied, he 'gan advance 2 Cf. Judges xv. 17. 3 Some propose to read "posts," from Judges xvi. 3. Josh. xv. 13 sq.; Numbers xiii. 33. 5 A Sabbath-day's journey was probably about from three-quarters to the whole of a geographical mile.-See Kitto's Cyclop. ii., p. 159 sq. 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 mate, Universally crowned with highest praises. SAMSON. I hear the sound of words, their sense the air Dissolves unjointed ere it reach my ear. CHORUS. He speaks, let us draw nigh. Matchless in might, The glory late of Israel, now the grief; We come, thy friends and neighbours not unknown, To visit or bewail thee; or, if better, Salve to thy sores; apt words have power to swage SAMSON. Your coming, friends, revives me, for I learn Yet that which was the worst now least afflicts me, 1 Both cities of the tribe of Dan, the latter being Samson's birthplace. |