And beg to hide them in a herd of swine,
Lest he command them down into the deep,
Bound, and to torment sent before their time.
Hail, Son of the Most High, heir of both worlds,
Queller of Satan! on thy glorious work
Now enter; and begin to save mankind.'

Thus they the Son of God, our Saviour meek, Sung victor, and, from heavenly feast refreshed, Brought on his way with joy; he, unobserved, Home to his mother's house private returned.

Samson. Attendant leading him. 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, 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, 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 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,
But rush upon me thronging, and present
Times past, what once I was, and what am now.
O, wherefore was my birth from heaven foretold
Twice by an angel, who at last in sight
Of both my parents all in flames ascended
From off the altar, where an offering burned,
As in a fiery column charioting

His god-like presence, and from some great act
Or benefit revealed to Abraham's race?
Why was my breeding ordered and prescribed
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
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

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?
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,
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

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
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
Would ask a life to wail; but chief of all,
O loss of sight, 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,
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
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.
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 bereaved thy prime decree?
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,

And almost life itself, if it be true
That light is in the soul,

She all in every part; why was this sight
To such a tender ball as the eye confined,
So obvious and so easy to be quenched?
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,
And buried; but, O 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:
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 to insult,
Their daily practice to afflict me more.
Enter Chorus.

Chor. This, this is he; softly a while,
Let us not break in upon him:

O change beyond report, thought, or belief!
See how he lies at random, carelessly diffused,
With languished head unpropt,

As one past hope abandoned,
And by himself given over ;

In slavish habit, ill-fitted weeds
O'erworn and soiled;

Or do my eyes misrepresent? Can this be he,
That heroic, that renowned,

Irresistible Samson? whom unarmed

No strength of man, or fiercest wild beast, could with

stand;

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

Ran on embattled armies clad in iron;

And, weaponless himself,

Made arms ridiculous, useless the forgery

Of brazen shield and spear, the hammered cuirass, Chalibean-tempered steel, and frock of mail Adamantéan proof?

But safest he who stood aloof,

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;

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 fore-skins fell, the flower of Palestine,

In Ramath-lechi, famous to this day.

Then by main force pulled up, and on his shoulders

Imprisoned now indeed,

In real darkness of the body dwells, Shut up from outward light

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 !
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
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.

Sams. I hear the sound of words; their sense the air

Dissolves unjointed ere it reach my ear.

Chor. 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,
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,
And are as balm to festered wounds.

Sams. 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
I would be understood ;) in prosperous days
They swarm, but in adverse withdraw their head,
Not to be found, though sought. Yet see, O friends,
How many evils have enclosed me round;.

Yet that which was the worst now least afflicts me,
Blindness; for had I sight, confused with shame,
How could I once look up or heave the head,
Who, like a foolish pilot, have shipwrecked
My vessel trusted to me from above,
Gloriously rigged; and for a word, a tear,
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?
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.

Chor. Tax not divine disposal; wisest men
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
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.
Sams. The first I saw at Timna, and she pleased
Me, not my parents, that I sought to wed
The daughter of an infidel: they knew not
That what I motioned was of God; I knew
From intimate impulse, and therefore urged
The marriage on; that by occasion hence
I might begin Israel's deliverance,
The work to which I was divinely called.
She proving false, the next I took to wife
(0 that I never had! fond wish too late)
Was in the vale of Sorec, Dalila,
That specious monster, my accomplished snare.
I thought it lawful from my former act,
And the same end; still watching to oppress
Israel's oppressors: of what now I suffer
She was not the prime cause, but I myself,
Who, vanquished with a peal of words, (O weak-
ness!)

Gave up my fort of silence to a woman.

Chor. In seeking just occasion to provoke
The Philistine, thy country's enemy,
Thou never wast amiss, I bear thee witness:
Yet Israël still serves with all his sons.

Sams. That fault I take not on me, but transfer
On Israel's governors and heads of tribes,
Who, seeing those great acts which God had done
Singly by me against their conquerors,
Acknowledged not, or not at all considered,
Deliverance offered: I on the other side
Used no ambition to commend my deeds;
The deeds themselves, though mute, spoke loud the
doer:

But they persisted deaf, and would not seem
To count them things worth notice, till at length
Their lords the Philistines with gathered powers
Entered Judea seeking me, who then
Safe to the rock of Etham was retired;
Not flying, but forecasting in what place.
To set upon them, what advantaged best.
Meanwhile the men of Judah, to prevent
The harass of their land, beset me round;
I willingly on some conditions came
Into their hands, and they as gladly yield me
To the uncircumcised a welcome prey,

Bound with two cords; but cords to me were threads
Touched with the flame: on their whole host I flew
Unarmed, and with a trivial weapon felled
Their choicest youth; they only lived who fled.
Had Judah that day joined, or one whole tribe,
They had by this possessed the towers of Gath,
And lorded over them whom they now serve;
But what more oft, in nations grown corrupt,
And by their vices brought to servitude,
Than to love bondage more than liberty;
Bondage with ease than strenuous liberty;
And to despise, or envy, or suspect,
Whom God hath of his special favour raised
As their deliverer? if he aught begin,
How frequent to desert him, and at last

To beap ingratitude on worthiest deeds!

Chor. Thy words to my remembrance bring
How Succoth and the fort of Penuel
Their great deliverer contemned,
The matchless Gideon, in pursuit

Of Madian, and her vanquished kings:
And how ingrateful Ephraim

Had dealt with Jephtha, who by argument,
Not worse than by his shield and spear,
Defended Israel from the Ammonite,
Had not his prowess quelled their pride
In that sore battle, when so many died
Without reprieve, adjudged to death,
For want of well pronouncing Shibboleth.

Sams. Of such examples add me to the roll;
Me easily indeed mine may neglect,
But God's proposed deliverance not so.
Chor. Just are the ways of God,

And justifiable to men ;

Unless there be, who think not God at all:
If any be, they walk obscure;

For of such doctrine never was there school,
But the heart of the fool,

And no man therein doctor but himself.

Yet more there be, who doubt his ways not just, As to his own edicts found contradicting, Then give the reins to wandering thought, Regardless of his glory's diminution; Till by their own perplexities involved, They ravel more, still less resolved, But never find self-satisfying solution.

As if they would confine the Interminable,
And tie him to his own prescript,

Who made our laws to bind us, not himself,
And hath full right to exempt
Whom so it pleases him by choice
From national obstriction, without taint
Of sin, or legal debt;

For with his own laws he can best dispense.
He would not else, who never wanted means,
Nor in respect of the enemy just cause,
To set his people free,

Have prompted this heroic Nazarite,

Against his vow of strictest purity,

To seek in marriage that fallacious bride,

Unclean, unchaste.

Down, reason, then; at least, vain reasonings,

down;

Though reason here aver,

That moral verdict quits her of unclean: Unchaste was subsequent; her stain, not his.

But see, here comes thy reverend sire With careful step, locks white as down, Old Manoah: advise

Forthwith how thou oughtest to receive him.

Sams. Ay me! another inward grief, awaked With mention of that name, renews the assault.

Enter Manoah.

Man. Brethren, and men of Dan, for such ye scem, Though in this uncouth place; if old respect,

As I suppose, towards your once gloried friend,
My son now captive, hither hath informed
Your younger feet, while mine cast back with age
Came lagging after; say if he be here.

Chor. As signal now in low dejected state,
As erst in highest, behold him where he lies.
Man. O miserable change! is this the man,
That invincible Samson, far renowned,
The dread of Israel's foes, who with a strength
Equivalent to angels walked their streets,
None offering fight; who single combatant
Duelled their armies ranked in proud array,
Himself an army, now unequal match
To save himself against a coward armed
At one spear's length? O ever-failing trust
In mortal strength! and oh! what not in man
Deceivable and vain? Nay, what thing good
Prayed for, but often proves our bane?

I prayed for children, and thought barrenness
In wedlock a reproach; I gained a son,
And such a son as all men hailed me happy;
Who would be now a father in my stead ?
O wherefore did God grant me my request,
And as a blessing with such pomp adorned?
Why are his gifts desirable, to tempt

Our earnest prayers, then, given with solemn hand
As graces, draw a scorpion's tail behind?
For this did the angel twice descend? for this
Ordained thy nurture holy, as of a plant
Select, and sacred, glorious for a while,
The miracle of men; then in an hour
Ensnared, assaulted, overcome, led bound,
Thy foe's derision, captive, poor, and blind,
Into a dungeon thrust, to work with slaves ?
Alas! methinks whom God hath chosen once
To worthiest deeds, if he through frailty err,
He should not so o'erwhelm, and as a thrall
Subject him to so foul indignities,

Be it but for honour's sake of former deeds.

Sams. Appoint not heavenly disposition, father; Nothing of all these evils hath befallen me But justly; I myself have brought them on, Sole author I, sole cause; if aught seem vile, As vile hath been my folly, who have profaned The mystery of God given me under pledge Of vow, and have betrayed it to a woman, A Canaanite, my faithless enemy. This well I knew, nor was at all surprised, But warned by oft experience: did not she Of Timna first betray me, and reveal The secret wrested from me in her highth Of nuptial love professed, carrying it straight To them who had corrupted her, my spies, And rivals? In this other was there found More faith, who also in her prime of love, Spousal embraces, vitiated with gold, Though offered only, by the scent conceived Her spurious first-born, treason against me? Thrice she assayed with flattering prayers and sighs, And amorous reproaches, to win from me My capital secret; in what part my strength