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��SAMSON AGONISTES
��Since man on earth, unparalleled,
The rarer thy example stands,
By how much from the top of wondrous
��Strongest of mortal men,
To lowest pitch of abject fortune thpu art
fallen.
For him I reckon not in high estate 170 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, 180
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 190 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, 200 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 trans- verse.
Chor. Tax not divine disposal. Wisest men 210
Have erred, and by bad women been de- ceived;
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 should'st 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 Tirana, and she pleased
Me, not my parents, that I sought to wed 220
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
(O that I never had ! fond wish too late !)
Was in the vale of Sorec, Dalila,
That specious monster,* my accomplished snare. 230
I thought it lawful from my former act,
And the same end, still watching to op- press
Israel's oppressors. Of what now I suf- fer
She was not the prime cause, but I my- self,
Who, vanquished with a peal of words, (O weakness !)
Gave up my fort of silence to a woman. Chor. In seeking just occasion to pro- voke
The Philistine, thy country's enemy,
�� �
