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 miferies
So many, and so 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 beggery, or decrepit age!

65

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 vileft 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, ftill as a fool,
In pow'r of others, never in my own;
Scarce half I feem to live, dead more than half.

75

69. or decrepit age!] So it is printed in the first edition; the later editors have omitted or, concluding I fuppofe that it made the verfe a fyllable too long. Mr. Calton proposes to read

- beggery in decrepit age!

Want join'd to the weaknesses of
helpless age, fays he, would render
it a very real mifery.
P4

87. And

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 bereav'd thy prime decree?
The fun to me is dark

And filent as the moon,

When the deferts the night

Hid in her vacant interlunar cave.
Since light so neceffary is to life,
And almost life itself, if it be true

87. And filent as the moon, &c] There cannot be a better note on this paffage than what Mr. Warburton has written on this verse of Shakespear 2 Henry VI. A&t I. Sc. 8.

Deep night, dark night, the

filent of the night. The filent of the night is a claffical expreffion, and means an interlunar night amica filentia lunæ. So Pliny, Inter omnes verò convenit, utiliffime in coitu ejus fterni, quem diem alii interlunii, alii filentis lunæ appellant. Lib. 16.cap. 39. In imitation of this language, Milton fays,

The fun to me is dark,

80

85

90

That

That light is in the foul,

diffus'd,

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
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 miserable!
Myfelf, my fepulchre, a moving grave,
Bury'd, yet not exempt

Where light and darkness in
perpetual round
Lodge and diflodge by turns.
See the note on this place. Thyer.

90. Since light fo neceffary is to

life, &c.] This intermixing of his philofophy very much weakens the force and pathos of Samfon's complaint, which in the main is excellent, but I think not altogether fo fine as the poet's lamentation of his own blindness at the beginning of the third book of the Paradife Loft; fo much better does every body write from his own feeling and experience, than when he imagines only what another would fay upon the fame occafion.

100. To live a life half dead, a

95

100

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

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 t' insult,
Their daily practice to afflict me more.
CHORUS.

This, this is he; foftly a while,

Let us not break in upon him;

O change beyond report, thought, or belief!
See how he lies at random, carelefly diffus'd,
With languish'd head unpropt,

105

110

115

As

As one past hope, abandon'd,

120

And by himself given over;

In flavish habit, ill-fitted weeds

O'er-worn and foil'd;

Or do my eyes mifreprefent? Can this be he,
That heroic, that renown'd,

Irrefiftible Samfon? whom unarm'd

125

No ftrength of man, or fierceft wild beast could

withstand;

Who tore the lion, as the lion tears the kid,

Ran on imbattel'd armies clad in iron,

And weaponlefs himself,

Made arms ridiculous, ufelefs the forgery

130

Of brazen shield and spear, the hammer'd cuirass,

Chalybean temper'd steel, and frock of mail

Adamantean proof;

But fafeft he who stood aloof,

135 When

Fufaque erant toto languida membra toro. Thyer.

133. Chaly bean temper'd fteel,] That is, the beft temper'd steel by the Chalybes, who were famous among the Ancients for their iron works. Virg. Georg. I. 58.

At Chalybes nudi ferrum -
The adjective fhould be pro-

nounc'd Chalybéan with the third fyllable long according to Heinfius's reading of that verfe of Ovid. Faft. IV. 405.

Es erat in pretio: Chalybeïa maffa latebat:

but Milton makes it fhort by the fame poetical liberty, with which he had before ufed 'gean for Egéan, and Thyestean for Thyeftean. 136. When