| |
| To their Abyss and horrid pains confined. | 500 |
| Man. Be penitent, and for thy fault contrite; | |
| But act not in thy own affliction, son. | |
| Repent the sin; but, if the punishment | |
| Thou canst avoid, self-preservation bids; | |
| Or the execution leave to high disposal, | 505 |
| And let another hand, not thine, exact | |
| Thy penal forfeit from thyself. Perhaps | |
| God will relent, and quit thee all his debt; | |
| Who ever more approves and more accepts | |
| (Best pleased with humble and filial submission) | 510 |
| Him who, imploring mercy, sues for life, | |
| Than who, self-rigorous, chooses death as due; | |
| Which argues over-just, and self-displeased | |
| For self-offence more than for God offended. | |
| Reject not, then, what offered means who knows | 515 |
| But God hath set before us to return thee | |
| Home to thy country and his sacred house. | |
| Where thou may’st bring thy offerings, to avert | |
| His further ire, with prayers and vows renewed. | |
| Sams. His pardon I implore; but, as for life, | 520 |
| To what end should I seek it? When in strength | |
| All mortals I excelled, and great in hopes, | |
| With youthful courage, and magnanimous thoughts | |
| Of birth from Heaven foretold and high exploits, | |
| Full of divine instinct, after some proof | 525 |
| Of acts indeed heroic, far beyond | |
| The sons of Anak, famous now and blazed, | |
| Fearless of danger, like a petty god | |
| I walked about, admired of all, and dreaded | |
| On hostile ground, none daring my affront— | 530 |
| Then, swollen with pride, into the snare I fell | |
| Of fair fallacious looks, venereal trains, | |
| Softened with pleasure and voluptuous life | |
| At length to lay my head and hallowed pledge | |
| Of all my strength in the lascivious lap | 535 |
| Of a deceitful Concubine, who shore me, | |
| Like a tame wether, all my precious fleece, | |
| Then turned me out ridiculous, despoiled, | |
| Shaven, and disarmed among my enemies. | |
| Chor. Desire of wine and all delicious drinks, | 540 |
| Which many a famous warrior overturns, | |
| Thou could’st repress; nor did the dancing ruby, | |
| Sparkling out-poured, the flavour or the smell, | |
| Or taste, that cheers the heart of gods and men, | |
| Allure thee from the cool crystal’lin stream. | 545 |
| Sams. Wherever fountain or fresh current flowed | |
| Against the eastern ray, translucent, pure | |
| With touch æthereal of Heaven’s fiery rod, | |
| I drank, from the clear milky juice allaying | |
| Thirst, and refreshed; nor envied them the grape | 550 |
| Whose heads that turbulent liquor fills with fumes. | |
| Chor. O madness! to think use of strongest wines | |
| And strongest drinks our chief support of health, | |
| When God with these forbidden made choice to rear | |
| His mighty Champion, strong above compare, | 555 |
| Whose drink was only from the liquid brook! | |
| Sams. But what availed this temperance, not complete | |
| Against another object more enticing? | |
| What boots it at one gate to make defence, | |
| And at another to let in the foe, | 560 |
| Effeminately vanquished? by which means, | |
| Now blind, disheartened, shamed, dishonoured, quelled, | |
| To what can I be useful? wherein serve | |
| My nation, and the work from Heaven imposed? | |
| But to sit idle on the household hearth, | 565 |
| A burdenous drone; to visitants a gaze, | |
| Or pitied object; these redundant locks, | |
| Robustious to no purpose, clustering down, | |
| Vain monument of strength; till length of years | |
| And sedentary numbness craze my limbs | 570 |
| To a contemptible old age obscure. | |
| Here rather let me drudge, and earn my bread, | |
| Till vermin, or the draff of servile food, | |
| Consume me, and oft-invocated death | |
| Hasten the welcome end of all my pains. | 575 |
| Man. Wilt thou then serve the Philistines with that gift | |
| Which was expressly given thee to annoy them? | |
| Better at home lie bed-rid, not only idle, | |
| Inglorious, unimployed, with age outworn. | |
| But God, who caused a fountain at thy prayer | 580 |
| From the dry ground to spring, thy thirst to allay | |
| After the brunt of battel, can as easy | |
| Cause light again within thy eyes to spring, | |
| Wherewith to serve him better than thou hast. | |
| And I persuade me so. Why else this strength | 585 |
| Miraculous yet remaining in those locks? | |
| His might continues in thee not for naught, | |
| Nor shall his wondrous gifts be frustrate thus. | |
| Sams. All otherwise to me my thoughts portend— | |
| That these dark orbs no more shall treat with light, | 590 |
| Nor the other light of life continue long, | |
| But yield to double darkness nigh at hand; | |
| So much I feel my genial spirits droop, | |
| My hopes all flat: Nature within me seems | |
| In all her functions weary of herself; | 595 |
| My race of glory run, and race of shame, | |
| And I shall shortly be with them that rest. | |
| Man. Believe not these suggestions, which proceed | |
| From anguish of the mind, and humours black | |
| That mingle with thy fancy. I, however, | 600 |
| Must not omit a father’s timely care | |
| To prosecute the means of thy deliverance | |
| By ransom or how else: meanwhile be calm, | |
| And healing words from these thy friends admit. | |
| Sams. Oh, that torment should not be confined | 605 |
| To the body’s wounds and sores, | |
| With maladies innumerable | |
| In heart, head, breast, and reins, | |
| But must secret passage find | |
| To the inmost mind, | 610 |
| There exercise all his fierce accidents, | |
| And on her purest spirits prey, | |
| As on entrails, joints, and limbs, | |
| With answerable pains, but more intense, | |
| Though void of corporal sense! | 615 |
| My griefs not only pain me | |
| As a lingering disease, | |
| But, finding no redress, ferment and rage; | |
| Nor less than wounds immedicable | |
| Rankle, and fester, and gangrene, | 620 |
| To black mortification. | |
| Thoughts, my tormentors, armed with deadly stings, | |
| Mangle my apprehensive tenderest parts, | |
| Exasperate, exulcerate, and raise | |
| Dire inflammation, which no cooling herb | 625 |
| Or medicinal liquor can assuage, | |
| Nor breath of vernal air from snowy Alp. | |
| Sleep hath forsook and given me o’er | |
| To death’s benumbing opium as my only cure; | |
| Thence faintings, swoonings of despair, | 630 |
| And sense of Heaven’s desertion. | |
| I was his nursling once and choice delight, | |
| His destined from the womb, | |
| Promised by heavenly message twice descending. | |
| Under his special eye | 635 |
| Abstemious I grew up and thrived amain; | |
| He led me on to mightiest deeds, | |
| Above the nerve of mortal arm, | |
| Against the Uncircumcised, our enemies: | |
| But now hath cast me off as never known, | 640 |
| And to those cruel enemies, | |
| Whom I by his appointment had provoked, | |
| Left me all helpless, with the irreparable loss | |
| Of sight, reserved alive to be repeated | |
| The subject of their cruelty or scorn. | 645 |
| Nor am I in the list of them that hope; | |
| Hopeless are all my evils, all remediless. | |
| This one prayer yet remains, might I be heard, | |
| No long petition—speedy death, | |
| The close of all my miseries and the balm. | 650 |
| Chor. Many are the sayings of the wise, | |
| In ancient and in modern books enrolled, | |
| Extolling patience as the truest fortitude, | |
| And to the bearing well of all calamities, | |
| All chances incident to man’s frail life, | 655 |
| Consolatories writ | |
| With studied argument, and much persuasion sought, | |
| Lenient of grief and anxious thought. | |
| But with the afflicted in his pangs their sound | |
| Little prevails, or rather seems a tune | 660 |
| Harsh, and of dissonant mood from his complaint, | |
| Unless he feel within | |
| Some source of consolation from above, | |
| Secret refreshings that repair his strength | |
| And fainting spirits uphold. | 665 |
| God of our fathers! what is Man, | |
| That thou towards him with hand so various— | |
| Or might I say contrarious?— | |
| Temper’st thy providence through his short course: | |
| Not evenly, as thou rul’st | 670 |
| The angelic orders, and inferior creatures mute, | |
| Irrational and brute? | |
| Nor do I name of men the common rout, | |
| That, wandering loose about, | |
| Grow up and perish as the summer fly, | 675 |
| Heads without name, no more remembered; | |
| But such as thou hast solemnly elected, | |
| With gifts and graces eminently adorned | |
| To some great work, thy glory, | |
| And people’s safety, which in part they effect. | 680 |
| Yet toward these, thus dignified, thou oft, | |
| Amidst their highth of noon, | |
| Changest thy countenance and thy hand, with no regard | |
| Of highest favours past | |
| From thee on them, or them to thee of service | 685 |
| Nor only dost degrade them, or remit | |
| To life obscured, which were a fair dismission, | |
| But throw’st them lower than thou didst exalt them high— | |
| Unseemly falls in human eye, | |
| Too grievous for the trespass or omission; | 690 |
| Oft leav’st them to the hostile sword | |
| Of heathen and profane, their carcasses | |
| To dogs and fowls a prey, or else captived, | |
| Or to the unjust tribunals, under change of times, | |
| And condemnation of the ungrateful multitude. | 695 |
| If these they scape, perhaps in poverty | |
| With sickness and disease thou bow’st them down, | |
| Painful diseases and deformed, | |
| In crude old age; | |
| Though not disordinate, yet causeless suffering | 700 |
| The punishment of dissolute days. In fine, | |
| Just or unjust alike seem miserable, | |
| For oft alike both come to evil end. | |
| So deal not with this once thy glorious Champion, | |
| The image of thy strength, and mighty minister. | 705 |
| What do I beg? how hast thou dealt already! | |
| Behold him in this state calamitous, and turn | |
| His labours, for thou canst, to peaceful end. | |
| But who is this? what thing of sea or land— | |
| Female of sex it seems— | 710 |
| That, so bedecked, ornate, and gay, | |
| Comes this way sailing, | |
| Like a stately ship | |
| Of Tarsus, bound for the isles | |
| Of Javan or Gadire, | 715 |
| With all her bravery on, and tackle trim, | |
| Sails filled, and streamers waving, | |
| Courted by all the winds that hold them play; | |
| An amber scent of odorous perfume | |
| Her harbinger, a damsel train behind? | 720 |
| Some rich Philistian matron she may seem; | |
| And now, at nearer view, no other certain | |
| Than Dalila thy wife. | |
| Sams. My wife! my traitress! let her not come near me. | |
| Chor. Yet on she moves; now stands and eyes thee fixed, | 725 |
| About to have spoke; but now, with head declined, | |
| Like a fair flower surcharged with dew, she weeps, | |
| And words addressed seem into tears dissolved, | |
| Wetting the borders of her silken veil. | |
| But now again she makes address to speak. | 730 |
| Dal. With doubtful feet and wavering resolution | |
| I came, I still dreading thy displeasure, Samson; | |
| Which to have merited, without excuse, | |
| I cannot but acknowledge. Yet, if tears | |
| May expiate (though the fact more evil drew | 735 |
| In the perverse event than I foresaw), | |
| My penance hath not slackened, though my pardon | |
| No way assured. But conjugal affection, | |
| Prevailing over fear and timorous doubt, | |
| Hath led me on, desirous to behold | 740 |
| Once more thy face, and know of thy estate, | |
| If aught in my ability may serve | |
| To lighten what thou suffer’st, and appease | |
| Thy mind with what amends is in my power— | |
| Though late, yet in some part to recompense | 745 |
| My rash but more unfortunate misdeed. | |
| Sams. Out, out, Hyæna! These are thy wonted arts, | |
| And arts of every woman false like thee— | |
| To break all faith, all vows, deceive, betray; | |
| |
