And aggravate my folly, who committed Of secrecy, my safety, and my life. 1000 CHOR. Yet beauty, tho' injurious, hath strange power, After offence returning, to regain Love once possess'd, nor can be easily 1005 [end; SAMS. Love-quarrels oft in pleasing concord Not wedlock-treachery endang'ring life. CHOR. It is not virtue, wisdom, valour, wit, Strength, comeliness of shape, or amplest merit, That woman's love can win or long inherit; But what it is, hard is to say, Harder to hit, Which way soever men refer it, Much like thy riddle, Samson, in one day If any of these or all, the Timnian bride 1015 Thy paranymph, worthless to thee compar'd, 1020 Successor in thy bed, Nor both so loosely disallied Their nuptials, nor this last so treacherously Is it for that such outward ornament 1008 Love] Terence, And. iii. 3. 23. 'Amantium iræ, amoris integratio est.' Newton. 1025 Were left for haste unfinish'd, judgment scant, Or value what is best In choice, but oftest to affect the wrong? That either they love nothing, or not long? 1030 Seeming at first all heavenly under virgin veil, 1035 Once join'd, the contrary she proves, a thorn A cleaving mischief, in his way to virtue With dotage, and his sense deprav'd To folly and shameful deeds which ruin ends. What pilot so expert but needs must wreck, Imbark'd with such a steers-mate at the helm ? Favour'd of heav'n who finds One virtuous, rarely found, That in domestic good combines : 1040 Happy that house! his way to peace is smooth; But virtue, which breaks through all opposition, And all temptation can remove, Most shines and most is acceptable above. Therefore God's universal law Gave to the man despotic power 1055 Smile she or lour: So shall he least confusion draw 1060 But had we best retire? I see a storm. [rain. past. CHOR. Look now for no inchanting voice, nor The bait of honied words; a rougher tongue 1066 Draws hitherward, I know him by his stride, The giant Harapha of Gath, his look [hither Haughty as is his pile high-built and proud. arrives. 1072 SAMS. Or peace or not, alike to me he comes. CHOR. His fraught we soon shall know, he now [chance, HAR. I come not, Samson, to condole thy As these perhaps, yet wish it had not been, 1065 Look] Euripid. Med. 771. —δέχου δὲ μὴ πρὸς ἡδονὴν λογους. Todd. 1066 honied] Withers' Fidelia, 1622. 'His honied words, his bitter lamentations.' Todd. 1075 fraught] Tit. Andronic. iv. 2. 'As the bark that hath discharg'd her fraught.' And Othello, act iii. sc. 3. 'Swell, bosom, with thy fraught. Todd. Though for no friendly intent. I am of Gath, As Og, or Anak, and the Emims old That Kiriathaim held; thou know'st me now If thou at all art known. Much I have heard Of thy prodigious might and feats perform❜d, Incredible to me, in this displeas'd, That I was never present on the place 1080 1085 Of those encounters, where we might have tried 1090 SAMS. The way to know were not to see but taste. HAR. Dost thou already single me? I thought Gyves and the mill had tam'd thee. O that for tune Had brought me to the field where thou art fam'd 1099 From the unforeskinn'd race, of whom thou bear'st SAMS. Boast not of what thou would'st have done, but do What then thou would'st; thou see'st it in thy hand. 1105 1110 HAR. To combat with a blind man I disdain, Or rather flight, no great advantage on me; spear, A weaver's beam, and seven-times-folded shield, 1121 vant-brass] Fairfax's Tasso, B. xx. st. 139. 1127 |