MANOAH, the Father of Samfon.
DALILA, his Wife.
The SCENE before the Prison in Gaza.
Samf. A Little onward lend thy guiding hand
To these dark steps, a little further on;
For yonder bank hath choice of fun or shade :
There I am wont to fit, when any chance
Relieves me from my task of fervile toil,
Daily' in the common prifon else injoin'd me,
Where I a prifoner chain'd, scarce freely draw
The air imprison'd also, close and damp,
Unwholesome draught: but here I feel amends,
The breath of Heav'n fresh blowing, pure and sweet,
With day-spring born; here leave me to refpire. 11
This day a folemn feaft the people hold
To Dagon their fea-idol, and forbid
Laborious works; unwillingly this reft
Their fuperftition yields me; hence with leave 15
Retiring from the popular noife, I feek
This unfrequented place to find fome ease,
Eafe to the body fome, none to the mind
From restlefs thoughts, that like a deadly fwarm
Of hornets arm'd, no fooner 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 Heav'n foretold
Twice by an Angel, who at last in fight
Of both my parents all in flames afcended
From off the altar, where an offering burn'd,
As in a fiery column charioting
His god-like prefence, and from fome great act
Or benefit reveal'd to Abraham's race?
Why was my breeding order'd and prescrib'd 30 As of a person separate to God,
Design'd for great exploits; if I must die
Betray'd, captiv'd, and both my eyes put out,
Made of my enemies the scorn and gaze ;
To grind in brazen fetters under task
With this Heav'n-gifted strength? O gloriousftrength
Put to the labor of a beaft, debas'd
Lower than bondslave! Promise was that I
Should Ifrael from Philiftian yoke deliver;
Afk for this great deliverer now, and find him 40
Eyeless in Gaza at the mill with flaves,
Himfelf in bonds under Philistian yoke:
Yet stay, let me not rafhly call in doubt
Divine prediction; what if all foretold
Had been fulfill'd 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 lodg'd, how easily bereft me,
Under the feal of filence 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 fecure, yet liable to fall
By weakest fubtleties, not made to rule,
But to fubferve where wisdom bears command!
God, when he gave me strength, to show withal
How flight the gift was, hung it in my hair.
But peace, I must not quarrel with the will
Of highest difpenfation, which herein
Haply had ends above my reach to know:
Suffices that to me ftrength is my bane,
And proves the fource of all my miseries ;
So many, and fo huge, that each apart
Would ask a life to wail, but chief of all,
O lofs of fight, 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, 70
And all her various objects of delight
Annull'd, which might in part my grief have eas'd,
Inferior to the vilest now become
Of man or worm; the vileft here excel me,
They creep, yet fee, I dark in light expos'd
To daily fraud, contempt, abuse and wrong,
Within doors, or without, still as a fool,
In pow'r 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
O firft created Beam, and thou great Word,
Let there be light, and light was over all;
Why am I thus bereav'd thy prime decree?
The fun to me is dark
And filent as the moon,
When she deferts 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 foul,
She all in every part; why was the fight
To fuch a tender ball as th' eye confin'd,
So obvious and so easy to be quench'd?
And not as feeling through all parts diffus'd, That she might look at will through every pore? Then had I not been thus exil'd from light,
As in the land of darkness yet in light,
To live a life half dead, a living death,
And bury'd; but O yet more miferable!
Myself, my fepulchre, a moving grave,
Bury'd, yet not exempt
By privilege of death and burial
From worft of other evils, pains and wrongs, 105
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