SAMSON. [Attendant leading him.]

A LITTLE onward lend thy guiding hand
To these dark steps, a little farther on;
For yonder bank hath choice of sun or shade:
There I am wont to sit, when any chance
Relieves me from my task of servile toil,
Daily in the common prison else enjoined me,
Where I, a prisoner chained, scarce freely draw
The air imprisoned also, close and damp,—
Unwholesome draught; but here I feel amends,-
The breath of heaven fresh blowing, pure and sweet,
With day-spring born; here leave me to respire.
This day a solemn feast the people hold
To Dagon their sea-idol, and forbid
Laborious works; unwillingly this rest
Their superstition yields me; hence, with leave,
Retiring from the popular noise, I seek
This unfrequented place to find some ease,-
Ease to the body some, none to the mind
From restless thoughts, that, like a deadly swarm
Of hornets armed, no sooner found alone,
But rush upon me thronging, and present
Times past, what once I was,-and what am now.
O wherefore was my birth from Heaven foretold
Twice by an Angel, who, at last, in sight
Of both my parents all in flames ascended
From off the altar, where an offering burned,
As in a fiery column charioting

ΙΟ

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Or benefit revealed to Abraham's race?
Why was my breeding ordered and prescribed
As of a person separate to God,

Designed for great exploits: if I must die

Betrayed, captíved, and both my eyes put out,
Made of my enemies the scorn and gaze;

To grind in brazen fetters under task

With this Heaven-gifted strength? O glorious strength
Put to the labour of a beast, debased

Lower than bond-slave!

Promise was that I

Should Israel from Philistian yoke deliver;

Ask for this great deliverer now, and find him
Eyeless in Gaza, at the mill with slaves,
Himself in bonds under Philistian yoke.
Yet stay, let me not rashly call in doubt
Divine prediction; what if all foretold

Had been fulfilled but through mine own default !
Whom have I to complain of but myself?
Who this high gift of strength committed to me,
In what part lodged, how easily bereft me,
Under the seal of silence could not keep,
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

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By weakest subtleties,—not made to rule,

But to subserve where wisdom bears command!

God, when he gave me strength, to show withal

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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

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,

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?
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,
And buried: but O 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,

But made hereby obnoxious more

To all the miseries of life,-

Life in captivity

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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.

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,
With languished head unpropt,

As one past hope, abandoned,
And by himself given over;

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
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 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,

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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,

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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,

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 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,
Might have subdued the earth,

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
The tumours of a troubled mind,

And are as balm to festered wounds.

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