Within Philistia's princely hall
Is held a glorious festival,
And on the fluctuant ether floats
The music of the timbrel's notes,
While living waves of voices gush,
Echoing among the distant hills,
Like an impetuous torrent's rush
When swollen by a thousand rills.
The stripling and the man of years,
Warriors with twice ten thousand spears,
Peasants and slaves and husbandmen,--
The shepherd from his mountain glen,
Vassal, and chief arrayed in gold
And purple robes--Philistines all
Are drawn together to behold
Their mighty foeman held in thrall.
Loud pealed the accents of the horn
Upon the air of the clear morn,
And deafening rose the mingled shout,
Cleaving the air from that wild rout,
As, guarded by a cavalcade
The illustrious prisoner appeared
And, 'mid the grove the dense spears made,
His forehead like a tall oak reared.
He stood with brawny shoulders bare,
And tossed his nervous arms in air--
Chains, leathern thongs, and brazen bands
Parted like wool within his hands;
And giant trunks of gnarled oak,
Splintered and into ribbons rent,
Or by his iron sinews broke,
Increased the people's wonderment.
The amphitheatre, where stood
Spell-bound the mighty multitude,
Rested its long and gilded walls
Upon two pillars' capitals:
His brawny arms, with labor spent,
He threw around the pillars there,
And to the deep blue firmament
Lifted his sightless orbs in prayer.
Anon the columns move--they shake,
Totter, and vacillate, and shake,
And wrenched by giant force, come down
Like a disrupted mountain's crown,
With cornice, frieze, and chapiter,
Girder, and spangled dome, and wall,
Ceiling of gold, and roof of fir,
Crumbled in mighty ruin all.
Down came the structure--on the air
Uprose in wildest shrieks despair,
Rolling in echoes loud and long
Ascending from the myriad throng:
And Samson, with the heaps of dead
Priest, vassal, chief, in ruin blent,
Piled over his victorious head
His sepulchre and monument.