Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never sere,
I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude,
And with forced fingers rude
Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year. 5
Bitter constraint and sad occasion dear
Compels me to disturb your season due;
For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime,
Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer.
Who would not sing for Lycidas? He knew 10
Himself to sing and build the lofty rhyme.
He must not float upon his watery bier
Unwept, and welter to the parching wind,
Without the meed of some melodious tear.
Begin, then, Sisters of the sacred well 15
That from beneath the seat of Jove doth spring;
Begin, and somewhat loudly sweep the string.
Hence with denial vain and coy excuse—
So may some gentle Muse
With lucky words favour _my_ destined urn, 20
And as he passes turn,
And bid fair peace be to my sable shroud—
For we were nursed upon the self-same hill,
Fed the same flock, by fountain, shade, and rill;
Together both, ere the high lawns appeared 25
Under the opening eyelids of the Morn,
We drove a-field, and both together heard
What time the grey-fly winds her sultry horn,
Battening our flocks with the fresh dews of night,
Oft till the star that rose at evening, bright, 30
Toward heaven's descent had sloped his westering wheel.
Meanwhile the rural ditties were not mute,
Tempered to the oaten flute;
Rough Satyrs danced, and Fauns with cloven heel
From the glad sound would not be absent long; 35
And old Damœtas loved to hear our song.
But, oh! the heavy change, now thou art gone,
Now thou art gone and never must return!
Thee, Shepherd, thee the woods, and desert caves
With wild thyme and the gadding vine o'ergrown, 40
And all their echoes, mourn.
The willows, and the hazel copses green,
Shall now no more be seen
Fanning their joyous leaves to thy soft lays.
As killing as the canker to the rose, 45
Or taint-worm to the weanling herds that graze,
Or frost to flowers, that their gay wardrobe wear,
When first the white-thorn blows;
Such, Lycidas, thy loss to shepherd's ear.
Where were ye, Nymphs, when the remorseless deep 50
Closed o'er the head of your loved Lycidas?
For neither were ye playing on the steep
Where your old bards, the famous Druids, lie,
Nor on the shaggy top of Mona high,
Nor yet where Deva spreads her wizard stream. 55
Ay me! I fondly dream
'Had ye been there,' . . . for what could that have done?
What could the Muse herself that Orpheus bore,
The Muse herself, for her enchanting son,
Whom universal nature did lament, 60
When, by the rout that made the hideous roar,
His gory visage down the stream was sent,
Down the swift Hebrus to the Lesbian shore?
Alas! what boots it with uncessant care
To tend the homely, slighted, shepherd's trade, 65
And strictly meditate the thankless Muse?
Were it not better done, as others use,
To sport with Amaryllis in the shade,
Or with the tangles of Neæra's hair?
Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise 70
(That last infirmity of noble mind)
To scorn delights and live laborious days;
But, the fair guerdon when we hope to find,
And think to burst out into sudden blaze,
Comes the blind Fury with the abhorrèd shears, 75
And slits the thin-spun life. 'But not the praise,'
Phœbus replied, and touched my trembling ears:
'Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil,
Nor in the glistering foil
Set off to the world, nor in broad rumour lies, 80
But lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyes
And perfect witness of all-judging Jove;
As he pronounces lastly on each deed,
Of so much fame in heaven expect thy meed.'
O fountain Arethuse, and thou honoured flood, 85
Smooth-sliding Mincius, crowned with vocal reeds,
That strain I heard was of a higher mood.
But now my oat proceeds,
And listens to the Herald of the Sea,
That came in Neptune's plea. 90
He asked the waves, and asked the felon winds,
What hard mishap hath doomed this gentle swain?
And questioned every gust of rugged wings
That blows from off each beakèd promontory.
They knew not of his story; 95
And sage Hippotades their answer brings,
That not a blast was from his dungeon strayed:
The air was calm, and on the level brine
Sleek Panope with all her sisters played.
It was that fatal and perfidious bark, 100
Built in the eclipse, and rigged with curses dark,
That sunk so low that sacred head of thine.
Next, Camus, reverend sire, went footing slow,
His mantle hairy, and his bonnet sedge,
Inwrought with figures dim, and on the edge 105
Like to that sanguine flower inscribed with woe.
'Ah! who has reft,' quoth he, 'my dearest pledge?'
Last came, and last did go,
The Pilot of the Galilean Lake;
Two massy keys he bore of metals twain 110
(The golden opes, the iron shuts amain).
He shook his mitred locks, and stern bespake:
'How well could I have spared for thee, young swain,
Enow of such as, for their bellies' sake,
Creep, and intrude, and climb into the fold! 115
Of other care they little reckoning make
Than how to scramble at the shearers' feast,
And shove away the worthy bidden guest.
Blind mouths! that scarce themselves know how to hold
A sheep-hook, or have learned aught else the least 120
That to the faithful herdman's art belongs!
What recks it them? What need they? They are sped;
And, when they list, their lean and flashy songs
Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw;
The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed, 125
But, swoln with wind and the rank mist they draw,
Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread;
Besides what the grim wolf with privy paw
Daily devours apace, and nothing said.
But that two-handed engine at the door 130
Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more.'
Return, Alpheus; the dread voice is past
That shrunk thy streams; return, Sicilian Muse,
And call the vales, and bid them hither cast
Their bells and flowerets of a thousand hues. 135
Ye valleys low, where the mild whispers use
Of shades, and wanton winds, and gushing brooks,
On whose fresh lap the swart star sparely looks,
Throw hither all your quaint enamelled eyes,
That on the green turf suck the honeyed showers, 140
And purple all the ground with vernal flowers.
Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies,
The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine,
The white pink, and the pansy freaked with jet,
The glowing violet, 145
The musk-rose, and the well-attired woodbine,
With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head,
And every flower that sad embroidery wears;
Bid amaranthus all his beauty shed,
And daffodillies fill their cups with tears, 150
To strew the laureate herse where Lycid lies.
For so, to interpose a little ease,
Let our frail thoughts dally with false surmise,
Ay me! whilst thee the shores and sounding seas
Wash far away, where'er thy bones are hurled; 155
Whether beyond the stormy Hebrides,
Where thou perhaps under the whelming tide
Visit'st the bottom of the monstrous world;
Or whether thou, to our moist vows denied,
Sleep'st by the fable of Bellerus old, 160
Where the great Vision of the guarded mount
Looks toward Namancos and Bayona's hold:
Look homeward, Angel, now, and melt with ruth:
And, O ye dolphins, waft the hapless youth.
Weep no more, woeful shepherds, weep no more, 165
For Lycidas, your sorrow, is not dead,
Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor.
So sinks the day-star in the ocean bed,
And yet anon repairs his drooping head,
And tricks his beams, and with new-spangled ore 170
Flames in the forehead of the morning sky:
So Lycidas sunk low, but mounted high,
Through the dear might of Him that walked the waves,
Where, other groves and other streams along,
With nectar pure his oozy locks he laves, 175
And hears the unexpressive nuptial song,
In the blest kingdoms meek of joy and love.
There entertain him all the Saints above,
In solemn troops, and sweet societies,
That sing, and singing in their glory move, 180
And wipe the tears for ever from his eyes.
Now, Lycidas, the shepherds weep no more;
Henceforth thou art the genius of the shore,
In thy large recompense, and shalt be good
To all that wander in that perilous flood. 185
Thus sang the uncouth swain to the oaks and rills,
While the still morn went out with sandals grey:
He touched the tender stops of various quills,
With eager thought warbling his Doric lay:
And now the sun had stretched out all the hills, 190
And now was dropt into the western bay.
At last he rose, and twitched his mantle blue;
To-morrow to fresh woods, and pastures new.
SAMSON AGONISTES
_A DRAMATIC POEM_
THE AUTHOR
JOHN MILTON
Aristot. Poet. Cap. 6.
Τραγῳδία μίμησις πράξεως σπουδαίας, etc.
Tragœdia est imitatio actionis seriæ, etc., per misericordiam
et metum perficiens talium affectuum lustrationem.
SAMSON AGONISTES
'_The intensest utterance of the most intense of English Poets_'
In his 'Reason of Church Government urged against Prelaty,' Milton makes
the following remarkable allegorical application of the story of Samson
to a king and his prelates. It is contained in 'THE CONCLUSION. _The
Mischief that Prelaty does to the State_':
'I shall shew briefly, ere I conclude, that the prelates, as they are to
the subjects a calamity, so are they the greatest underminers and
betrayers of the monarch, to whom they seem to be most favourable. I
cannot better liken the state and person of a king than to that mighty
Nazarite Samson; who being disciplined from his birth in the precepts
and the practice of temperance and sobriety, without the strong drink of
injurious and excessive desires, grows up to a noble strength and
perfection with those his illustrious and sunny locks, the laws, waving
and curling about his godlike shoulders. And while he keeps them about
him undiminished and unshorn, he may with the jawbone of an ass, that
is, with the word of his meanest officer, suppress and put to confusion
thousands of those that rise against his just power. But laying down his
head among the strumpet flatteries of prelates, while he sleeps and
thinks no harm, they wickedly shaving off all those bright and weighty
tresses of his law, and just prerogatives, which were his ornament and
strength, deliver him over to indirect and violent counsels, which, as
those Philistines, put out the fair and far-sighted eyes of his natural
discerning, and make him grind in the prison house of their sinister
ends and practices upon him; till he, knowing this prelatical razor to
have bereft him of his wonted might, nourish again his puissant hair,
the golden beams of law and right; and they, sternly shook, thunder
with ruin upon the heads of those his evil counsellors, but not without
great affliction to himself. This is the sum of their loyal service to
kings; yet these are the men that still cry, The king, the king, the
Lord's anointed! We grant it; and wonder how they came to light upon
anything so true; and wonder more, if kings be the Lord's anointed, how
they dare thus oil over and besmear so holy an unction with the corrupt
and putrid ointment of their base flatteries; which, while they smooth
the skin, strike inward and envenom the lifeblood. What fidelity kings
can expect from prelates, both examples past, and our present experience
of their doings at this day, whereon is grounded all that hath been
said, may suffice to inform us. And if they be such clippers of regal
power, and shavers of the laws, how they stand affected to the lawgiving
parliament, yourselves, worthy peers and commons, can best testify; the
current of whose glorious and immortal actions hath been only opposed by
the obscure and pernicious designs of the prelates, until their
insolence broke out to such a bold affront, as hath justly immured their
haughty looks within strong walls.'
'The Reason of Church Government urged against Prelaty' was published in
1641, nearly eight years before Charles I. was beheaded, and just thirty
years before the publication of 'Samson Agonistes.' He little dreamed
that the reigning king would, in less than eight years, be put to death,
and that he should play such a rôle in the subsequent state of things,
should have such experiences and such disappointments and sorrows as
would make the fortunes of Samson the prototype of a great final
creation embodying allegorically his own strangely similar fortunes.
In Milton's MS. jottings of subjects for a tragedy or an epic poem, in
the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge, made in 1640 and some time
following, and occupying seven pages of folio-sized paper, is included
(No. 19 of the list of Old Testament subjects) 'Samson Pursophorus or
Hybristes' [_i.e._ Samson the Firebrand-bringer or Violent, as Masson
explains], 'or Samson Marrying, or Ramath-Lechi: Judges xv.'
Nothing, of course, could have been more remote from Milton's mind than
that thirty years after this jotting, his swan-song would be given to
the world, in which Samson, blind and among the Philistines, would
allegorically reflect his own condition, in the last years of his life.
'The parallelisms in the fortunes of Samson and Milton have been noticed
by almost every editor and every critic of the 'Samson Agonistes.' They
are too obvious to escape the notice of the most careless reader who
knows anything of the life of Milton. Samson is Milton in the polemic
and in the post-Restoration period of his life. In all literature there
is not a nobler, more exalting and pathetic egotism, than the 'Samson
Agonistes' exhibits—an egotism for which every lover of the great poet
must be abundantly thankful. 'How very much,' Walter Savage Landor
justly remarks, 'would literature have lost, if this marvellously great
and admirable man had omitted the various references to himself and his
contemporaries!'
Of the numerous autobiographical passages in the 'Samson Agonistes,'
which editors have noted, those most distinctly so are the following:
vv. 40, 41; 67-109; 191-193; 219-226; 241-255; 268-276; 563-572;
590-598; 695-702; 760, 761; 1025-1060; 1418-1422; 1461-1471; 1687-1707.
These passages show that the allegorical significance of the 'Samson
Agonistes' bears not only upon Milton's individual life and experiences,
but also upon the backsliding of the English people, in their
restoration of monarchy. The misgivings to which Milton gave expression
in his 'Ready and easy way to establish a free commonwealth, and the
excellence thereof, compared with the inconveniences and dangers of
readmitting kingship in this nation,' were realized in less than three
months after its publication late in February or early in March, 1660.
Charles II. entered London May 29, 1660. These misgivings are expressed,
or, at least, implied, in the following passage of 'The ready and easy
way.' The involved construction of the language in this pamphlet shows
that it must have been very hastily dictated by the blind poet:
'After our liberty and religion thus prosperously fought for, gained,
and many years possessed, except in those unhappy interruptions, which
God hath removed; now that nothing remains, but in all reason the
certain hopes of a speedy and immediate settlement for ever in a firm
and free commonwealth, for this extolled and magnified nation,
regardless both of honour won, or deliverances vouchsafed from heaven,
to fall back, or rather to creep back so poorly, _as it seems the
multitude would_, to their once abjured and detested thraldom of
kingship, to be ourselves the slanderers of our own just and religious
deeds, though done by some to covetous and ambitious ends, yet not
therefore to be stained with their infamy, or they to asperse the
integrity of others; and yet these now by revolting from the conscience
of deeds well done, both in church and state, to throw away and forsake,
or rather to betray, a just and noble cause for the mixture of bad men
who have ill-managed and abused it (which had our fathers done
heretofore, and on the same pretence deserted true religion, what had
long ere this become of our gospel, and all protestant reformation so
much intermixed with the avarice and ambition of some reformers?), and
by thus relapsing, to verify all the bitter predictions of our
triumphing enemies, who will now think they wisely discerned and justly
censured both us and all our actions as rash, rebellious, hypocritical,
and impious; not only argues a strange, degenerate contagion suddenly
spread among us, fitted and prepared for new slavery, but will render us
a scorn and derision to all our neighbours.'
OF THAT SORT OF DRAMATIC POEM WHICH IS CALLED TRAGEDY
Tragedy, as it was anciently composed, hath been ever held the gravest,
moralest, and most profitable of all other poems; therefore said by
Aristotle to be of power, by raising pity and fear, or terror, to purge
the mind of those and such-like passions,—that is, to temper and reduce
them to just measure with a kind of delight, stirred up by reading or
seeing those passions well imitated. Nor is Nature wanting in her own
effects to make good his assertion; for so, in physic, things of
melancholic hue and quality are used against melancholy, sour against
sour, salt to remove salt humours. Hence philosophers and other gravest
writers, as Cicero, Plutarch, and others, frequently cite out of tragic
poets, both to adorn and illustrate their discourse. The Apostle Paul
himself thought it not unworthy to insert a verse of Euripides into the
text of Holy Scripture, 1 Cor. xv. 33; and Paræus, commenting on the
_Revelation_, divides the whole book, as a tragedy, into acts,
distinguished each by a chorus of heavenly harpings and song between.
Heretofore men in highest dignity have laboured not a little to be
thought able to compose a tragedy. Of that honour Dionysius the elder
was no less ambitious than before of his attaining to the tyranny.
Augustus Cæsar also had begun his _Ajax_, but, unable to please his own
judgment with what he had begun, left it unfinished. Seneca, the
philosopher, is by some thought the author of those tragedies (at least
the best of them) that go under that name. Gregory Nazianzen, a Father
of the Church, thought it not unbeseeming the sanctity of his person to
write a tragedy, which is entitled 'Christ Suffering.' This is mentioned
to vindicate Tragedy from the small esteem, or rather infamy, which in
the account of many it undergoes at this day with other common
interludes; happening through the poet's error of intermixing comic
stuff with tragic sadness and gravity, or introducing trivial and vulgar
persons: which by all judicious hath been counted absurd, and brought in
without discretion, corruptly to gratify the people. And though ancient
Tragedy use no Prologue, yet using sometimes, in case of self-defence or
explanation, that which Martial calls an Epistle, in behalf of this
tragedy, coming forth after the ancient manner, much different from what
among us passes for best, thus much beforehand may be _epistled_,—that
Chorus is here introduced after the Greek manner, not ancient only, but
modern, and still in use among the Italians. In the modelling therefore
of this poem, with good reason, the Ancients and Italians are rather
followed, as of much more authority and fame. The measure of verse used
in the Chorus is of all sorts, called by the Greeks _monostrophic_, or
rather _apolelymenon_, without regard had to strophe, antistrophe, or
epode,—which were a kind of stanzas framed only for the music, then
used with the Chorus that sung; not essential to the poem, and therefore
not material; or, being divided into stanzas or pauses, they may be
called _allœostropha_. Division into act and scene, referring chiefly
to the stage (to which this work never was intended), is here omitted.
It suffices if the whole drama be found not produced beyond the fifth
act. Of the style and uniformity, and that commonly called the plot,
whether intricate or explicit,—which is nothing indeed but such
economy, or disposition of the fable, as may stand best with
verisimilitude and decorum,—they only will best judge who are not
unacquainted with Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, the three tragic
poets unequalled yet by any, and the best rule to all who endeavour to
write Tragedy. The circumscription of time, wherein the whole drama
begins and ends, is, according to ancient rule and best example, within
the space of twenty-four hours.—_M._
THE ARGUMENT
_Samson, made captive, blind, and now in the prison at Gaza, there to
labour as in a common workhouse, on a festival day, in the general
cessation from labour, comes forth into the open air, to a place nigh,
somewhat retired, there to sit a while and bemoan his condition. Where
he happens at length to be visited by certain friends and equals of his
tribe, which make the Chorus, who seek to comfort him what they can;
then by his old father, Manoa, who endeavours the like, and withal tells
him his purpose to procure his liberty by ransom; lastly, that this
feast was proclaimed by the Philistines as a day of thanksgiving for
their deliverance from the hands of Samson—which yet more troubles him.
Manoa then departs to prosecute his endeavour with the Philistian lords
for Samson's redemption: who, in the meanwhile, is visited by other
persons, and, lastly, by a public officer to require his coming to the
feast before the lords and people, to play or show his strength in their
presence. He at first refuses, dismissing the public officer with
absolute denial to come: at length, persuaded inwardly that this was
from God, he yields to go along with him, who came now the second time
with great threatenings to fetch him. The Chorus yet remaining on the
place, Manoa returns full of joyful hope to procure ere long his son's
deliverance; in the midst of which discourse an Ebrew comes in haste,
confusedly at first, and afterwards more distinctly, relating the
catastrophe—what Samson had done to the Philistines, and by accident to
himself; wherewith the Tragedy ends._
THE PERSONS
SAMSON.
MANOA, the Father of Samson.
DALILA, his wife.
HARAPHA, of Gath.
Public Officer.
Messenger.
Chorus of Danites.
The SCENE, before the Prison in Gaza.
SAMSON AGONISTES
_Samson._ A little onward lend thy guiding hand
To these dark steps, a little further 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, 5
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, 10
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 15
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 20
But rush upon me thronging, and present
Times past, what once I was, and what am now.
Oh, wherefore was my birth from Heaven foretold
Twice by an Angel, who at last, in sight
Of both my parents, all in flames ascended 25
From off the altar where an offering burned,
As in a fiery column charioting
His godlike presence, and from some great act
Or benefit revealed to Abraham's race?
Why was my breeding ordered and prescribed 30
As of a person separate to God,
Designed for great exploits, if I must die
Betrayed, captived, and both my eyes put out,
Made of my enemies the scorn and gaze,
To grind in brazen fetters under task 35
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 40
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? 45
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, 50
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 55
By weakest subtleties; not made to rule,
But to subserve where wisdom bears command.
God, when he gave me strength, to show withal
How slight the gift was, hung it in my hair.
But peace! I must not quarrel with the will 60
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 65
Would ask a life to wail. But chief of all,
O loss of sight, of thee I most complain!
Blind among enemies! Oh worse than chains,
Dungeon, or beggary, or decrepit age!
Light, the prime work of God, to me is extinct, 70
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 75
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.
Oh dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon, 80
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? 85
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, 90
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, 95
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, 100
And buried; but, oh 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; 105
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 110
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.
_Chorus._ This, this is he; softly a while; 115
Let us not break in upon him.
Oh change beyond report, thought, or belief!
See how he lies at random, carelessly diffused,
With languished head unpropt,
As one past hope, abandoned, 120
And by himself given over,
In slavish habit, ill-fitted weeds
O'er-worn and soiled.
Or do my eyes misrepresent? Can this be he,
That heroic, that renowned, 125
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, 130
Made arms ridiculous, useless the forgery
Of brazen shield and spear, the hammered cuirass,
Chalybean-tempered steel, and frock of mail
Adamantean proof;
But safest he who stood aloof, 135
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, 140
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 foreskins fell, the flower of Palestine,
In Ramath-lechi, famous to this day. 145
Then by main force pulled up, and on his shoulders bore,
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
Which shall I first bewail,
Thy bondage or lost sight?
Prison within prison
Inseparably dark.
Thou art become (Oh worst imprisonment!) 155
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 160
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, 165
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 170
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. 175
_Samson._ I hear the sound of words; their sense the air
Dissolves unjointed ere it reach my ear.
_Chorus._ 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, 180
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, 185
And are as balm to festered wounds.
_Samson._ Your coming, friends, revives me; for I learn
Now of my own experience, not by talk,
How counterfeit a coin they are who 'friends'
Bear in their superscription (of the most 190
I would be understood). In prosperous days
They swarm, but in adverse withdraw their head,
Not to be found, though sought. Ye see, O friends,
How many evils have enclosed me round;
Yet that which was the worst now least afflicts me, 195
Blindness; for had I sight, confused with shame,
How could I once look up, or heave the head,
Who, like a foolish pilot, have shipwracked
My vessel trusted to me from above,
Gloriously rigged; and for a word, a tear, 200
Fool! have divulged the secret gift of God
To a deceitful woman? tell me, friends,
Am I not sung and proverbed for a fool
In every street? do they not say, 'how well
Are come upon him his deserts?' yet why? 205
Immeasurable strength they might behold
In me, of wisdom nothing more than mean.
This with the other should, at least, have paired;
These two, proportioned ill, drove me transverse.
_Chorus._ Tax not divine disposal. Wisest men 210
Have erred, and by bad women been deceived;
And shall again, pretend they ne'er so wise.
Deject not, then, so overmuch thyself,
Who hast of sorrow thy full load besides.
Yet, truth to say, I oft have heard men wonder 215
Why thou shouldst wed Philistian women rather
Than of thine own tribe fairer, or as fair,
At least of thy own nation, and as noble.