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! Oh worse than chains,
Dungeon, or beggary, or decrepit age!

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Light, the prime work of God, to me is extinct,
And all her various objects of delight

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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

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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,
Irrecoverably dark, total eclipse

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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,

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To such a tender ball as the eye confined,

So obvious and so easy to be quenched,

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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, 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;
But made hereby obnoxious more

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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.

Chorus. This, this is he; softly a while;

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,

And by himself given over,

IIO

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In slavish habit, ill-fitted weeds

O'er-worn and soiled.

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

Irresistible Samson? whom unarmed,

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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,

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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,

When insupportably his foot advanced,

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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,

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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.

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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.
Which shall I first bewail,

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(Which men enjoying sight oft without cause complain)

Imprisoned now indeed,

In real darkness of the body dwells,

Shut up from outward light

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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,

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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

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Whom long descent of birth

Or the sphere of fortune raises;

sistance Might have subdued the earth,

The glory late of Israel, now the grief!

From Eshtaol and Zora's fruitful vale,

But thee, whose strength, while virtue was her mate,

Universally crowned with highest praises.

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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,

We come, thy friends and neighbours not unknown,

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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,

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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

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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,
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,
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.

Chorus. 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.

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Yet, truth to say, I oft have heard men wonder

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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.

Samson. The first I saw at Timna, and she pleased

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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

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