To what can I be useful, wherein serve

My nation, and the work from Heaven imposed,
But to sit idle on the household hearth,
A burdenous drone; to visitants a gaze,
Or pitied object, these redundant locks
Robustious to no purpose clustering down,
Vain monument of strength; till length of years
And sedentary numbness craze my limbs
To a contemptible old age obscure?

Here 1ather let me drudge and earn my bread,
Till vermin or the draff of servile food
Consume me, and oft-invocated death
Hasten the welcome end of all my pains.

ΜΑΝΟΛΗ.

Wilt thou then serve the Philistines with that gift
Which was expressly given thee to annoy them?
Better at home lie bed-rid, not only idle,
Inglorious, unemployed, with age outworn.
But God, who caused a fountain at thy prayer
From the dry ground to spring, thy thirst to allay
After the brunt of battle, can as easy

Cause light again within thy eyes to spring,
Wherewith to serve him better than thou hast;
And I persuade me so; why else this strength
Miraculous yet remaining in those locks?
His might continues in thee not for nought,
Nor shall his wondrous gifts be frustrate thus.

SAMSON.

All otherwise to me my thoughts portend, That these dark orbs no more shall treat with light, Nor the other light of life continue long, But yield to double darkness nigh at hand: So much I feel my genial spirits droop, My hopes all flat, nature within me seems In all her functions weary of herself, My race of glory run, and race of shame, And I shall shortly be with them that rest.

MANOAH.

Believe not these suggestions, which proceed From anguish of the mind and humours black,

That mingle with thy fancy. I, however,
Must not omit a father's timely care

To prosecute the means of thy deliverance
By ransom, or how else: meanwhile be calm,
And healing words from these thy friends admit.

SAMSON.

Oh, that torment should not be confined

To the body's wounds and sores,

With maladies innumerable

In heart, head, breast, and reins;
But must secret passage find

To the inmost mind,

There exercise all his fierce accidents,
And on her purest spirits prey,

As on entrails, joints and limbs,

With answerable pains, but more intense,
Though void of corporal sense!

My griefs not only pain me

As a lingering disease,

But, finding no redress, ferment and rage,
Nor less than wounds immedicable

Rankle, and fester, and gangrene,

To black mortification.

Thoughts my tormentors armed with deadly stings Mangle my apprehensive tenderest parts,

Exasperate, exulcerate, and raise

Dire inflammation, which no cooling herb

Or medicinal liquor can assuage,

Nor breath of vernal air from snowy Alp.
Sleep hath forsook and given me o'er

To death's benumbing opium as my only cure:
These faintings, swoonings of despair,

And sense of Heaven's desertion.

I was his nurseling once, and choice delight; His destined from the womb,

Promised by heavenly message twice descending, Under his special eye

Abstemious I grew up and thrived amain;

He led me on to mightiest deeds

Above the nerve of mortal arm

Against the uncircumcised, our enemies;
But now hath cast me off as never known,
And to those cruel enemies,

Whom I by his appointment had provoked,
Left me all helpless with the irreparable loss
Of sight, reserved alive to be repeated
The subject of their cruelty or scorn.
Nor am I in the list of them that hope;
Hopeless are all my evils, all remediless;
This one prayer yet remains, might I be heard,
No long petition, speedy death,

The close of all my miseries, and the balm.

CHORUS.

Many are the sayings of the wise
In ancient and in modern books enrolled,
Extolling patience as the truest fortitude;
And to the bearing well of all calamities,
All chances incident to man's frail life,
Consolatories writ

With studied argument, and much persuasion sought
Lenient of grief and anxious thought:

But with the afflicted in his pangs their sound

Little prevails, or rather seems a tune

Harsh, and of dissonant mood from his complaint;

Unless he feel within

Some source of consolation from above,

Secret refreshings, that repair his strength,

And fainting spirits uphold.

God of our fathers! what is man,

That thou towards him with hand so various,

Or might I say contrarious,

Temperest thy providence through his short course, Not evenly, as thou rul'st

The angelic orders and inferior creatures mute,

Irrational and brute.

Nor do I name of men the common rout,

That wandering loose about

Grow up and perish, as the summer fly,
Heads without name no more remembered,
But such as thou hast solemnly elected,