SAMSON. [Attendant leading him.] A LITTLE onward lend thy guiding hand ΙΟ 20 Or benefit revealed to Abraham's race? Designed for great exploits: if I must die Betrayed, captíved, and both my eyes put out, To grind in brazen fetters under task With this Heaven-gifted strength? O glorious strength Lower than bond-slave! Promise was that I Should Israel from Philistian yoke deliver; Ask for this great deliverer now, and find him Had been fulfilled but through mine own default ! 30 40 50 By weakest subtleties,—not made to rule, But to subserve where wisdom bears command! God, when he gave me strength, to show withal 60 How slight the gift was, hung it in my hair. Dungeon, or beggary, or decrepit age! 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: O first created beam! and thou great Word, And silent, as the moon, When she deserts the night, Hid in her vacant interlunar cave. 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 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? To live a life half dead, a living death, 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 70 80 90 100 Among inhuman foes. But who are these? for with joint pace I hear Enter 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, As one past hope, abandoned, In slavish habit, ill-fitted weeds O'erworn and soiled ; 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, Chalybean tempered steel, and frock of mail Adamantéan 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 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 fore-skins fell, the flower of Palestine, In Ramath-lechi famous to this day. Then by main force pulled up, and on his shoulders bore, 130 140 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. 150 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; 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, To lowest pitch of abject fortune thou art fallen! 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. Sam. 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 From Eshtaol and Zora's fruitful vale, To visit or bewail thee; or, if better, Counsel or consolation we may bring, Salve to thy sores; apt words have power to swage And are as balm to festered wounds. 180 |