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

50

55

By weakest subtleties; not made to rule,

But to subserve where wisdom bears command.

God, when he gave me strength, to shew 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,
And all her various objects of delight

58. To shew withal, &c.] That he might show at the same time, &c., an infinitive clause adverbial to the clause following.

62. Above my reach to know.] Which it is above my reach to know, or, to know which is above my reach: an adjective clause to ends.

63. Suffices, &c.] 'That to me strength is,' &c., suffices.

64. Proves the source.] A neuter verb followed by a nominative. 66. Ask.] Here used in the obsolete sense of require, Shaksp. Mids. N. Dr. i. 2, That

30

Annulled, which might in part my grief have eased,
Inferior to the vilest now become

Of man or worm; the vilest here excel me:
They creep, yet see; I, dark in light, exposed
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 bereaved thy prime decree?

The sun to me is dark

And silent, as the moon

She all in every part-why was the sight
To such a tender ball as the eye confined,
So obvious, and so easy to be quenched?
And not, as feeling, through all parts diffused,
That she might look at will through every pore?
Then had I not been thus exiled from light,
As in the land of darkness, yet in light,

To live a life half dead, a living death,

100

And buried; but Oh, 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 wrongs;

105

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.

Chorus. 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 diffused,

110

115

118. Diffused.] Extended: an adaptation from the Latin. So Virgil, Aen. vi. 423, 'Fusus humi, totoque ingens extenditur antro;' and Ovid, Ex Ponto, III. iii. 8, Fusaque erant toto languida membra toro.' Compare Spenser, F. Q. I. vii. 7,

Yet goodly court he made still to his dame,

Poured out in looseness on the grassy ground.

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

130

Of brazen shield and spear, the hammered cuirass,

Chalybean tempered steel, and frock of mail

Adamantean proof.

But safest he who stood aloof,

When insupportably his foot advanced,

In scorn of their proud arms and warlike tools,

Spurned them to death by troops.

The bold Ascalonite

Fled from his lion ramp; old warriors turned

Their plated backs under his heel,

Or grovelling soiled their crested helmets in the dust.
Then with what trivial weapon came to hand,

The jaw of a dead ass, his sword of bone,

A thousand foreskins fell, the flower of Palestine,

120. Past hope.] A preposition phrase, adjectival to one.

127. Or fiercest.] Or of fier

cest.

133. Chalybean.] The Chalybes were a people of Pontus in Asia Minor, who were famous as workers of iron.

134. Adamantean proof.] Of adamantean proof.

136. Insupportably, &c.] His

135

140

In Ramath-lechi, famous to this day.

145

Then by main force pulled up, and on his shoulders bore, The gates of Azza, post and massy bar,

Up to the hill by Hebron, seat of giants old,—

heaven.

No journey of a sabbath-day, and loaded so,—
Like whom the Gentiles feign to bear up
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 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,

145. In Ramath-lechi.] Judges XV. 17.

147. Azza.] Azzah in Jer. xxv. 20.

150

155

160

154. Inseparably dark.] That admits of no separation from Gaza: called darkness. Samson being the dungeon of himself, could not be separated from darkness by being removed out of the prison of Gaza.

148. Seat of giants.] 'The city of Arba, the father of Anak, which city is Hebron.' Josh. xv. 13. 149. No journey.] This is a nominative of exclamation. A sabbath-day's journey was little more than a mile. Hebron was about 40 miles east of Gaza.

And loaded so.] And he loaded so where he is another nominative of exclamation.

150. Like whom.] Loaded like him whom, &c. viz. Atlas, who was supposed to bear heaven on his shoulders.

157. Which men, &c.] Which imprisonment of the soul within the body, men who enjoy sight often complain of without reason.

161. To incorporate, &c.] To occupy a body of darkness.

163. No visual beam.] No ray of light to occasion vision.

164. O mirror, &c.] A person was called the mirror of grace, politeness, knighthood, &c. who was considered the most