O'ercome with importunity and tears. By weakest subtleties, not made to rule, But to subserve where wisdom bears command! Annull'd, which might in part my grief have eas'd, Of man or worm; the vilest here excel me; O first created Beam, and thou great Word, And silent as the Moon, When she deserts the night, Hid in her vacant interlunar cave. She all in every part; why was the sight By privilege of death and burial From worst of other evils, pains and wrongs; 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 [Enter CHORUS.] Chor. This, this is he; softly a while, O change beyond report, thought, or belief! As one past hope, abandon'd, In slavish habit, ill-fitted weeds Or do my eyes misrepresent? Can this be he, [withstand; Irresistible Samson ? whom unarm'd No strength of man, or fiercest wild beast, could 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 hammer'd cuirass, Chalybean temper'd steel, and frock of mail Adamantéan proof? But safest he who stood aloof, When insupportably his foot advanc'd, In scorn of their proud arms and warlike tools, Spurn'd them to death by troops. calonite The bold As Fled from his lion ramp; old warriours turn'd Or, groveling, soil'd 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 fore-skins fell, the flower of Palestine, In Ramath-lechi, famous to this day. [bore 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, [plain) (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 fickle state, The rarer thy example stands, By how much from the top of wonderous glory, Strongest of mortal men, To lowest pitch of abject fortune thou art fallen. Whom long descent of birth, Or the sphere of fortune, raises; But thee whose strength, while virtue was her mate, Might have subdued the Earth, Universally crown'd with highest praises. Sams. I hear the sound of words; their sense the air Dissolves unjointed ere it reach my ear. Chor. 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 And are as balm to fester'd wounds. [learn Sams. Your coming, friends, revives me; for I Yet that which was the worst now least afflicts me, |