The Annotated Milton: Complete English Poems (154 page)

The chorus yet remaining on the place, Manoa returns full of joyful hope to procure, ere long, his son’s deliverance, in the midst of which discourse an Hebrew comes in haste, confusedly at first, and afterward more distinctly, relating the catastrophe: what Samson had done to the Philistines, and by accident to himself, wherewith the tragedy ends.

THE PERSONS

Samson.

Harapha of Gath.

Manoa, the father of Samson.

Public officer.

Messenger.

Dalila, his wife.

Chorus of Danites.
⁷³⁴²

The scene: before the prison in Gaza.

SAM. A little onward lend thy guiding hand

To these dark steps, a little further on,

For yonder bank
⁷³⁴³
hath choice of sun or shade.

There I am wont
⁷³⁴⁴
to sit, when any chance

Relieves me from my task of servile
⁷³⁴⁵
toil,

Daily in the common prison else enjoined
⁷³⁴⁶
me,

Where I, a prisoner chained, scarce freely draw
⁷³⁴⁷

The air—imprisoned also, close and damp,

Unwholesome
⁷³⁴⁸
draught.
⁷³⁴⁹
But here I feel amends,
⁷³⁵⁰

The breath of Heav’n fresh-blowing, pure and sweet,

With day-spring born. Here leave me to respire.
⁷³⁵¹

This day a solemn feast the people hold

To Dagon
⁷³⁵²
their sea-Idol, and forbid

Laborious
⁷³⁵³
works. Unwillingly this rest

Their superstition
⁷³⁵⁴
yields me. Hence with leave
⁷³⁵⁵

Retiring from the popular
⁷³⁵⁶
noise, I seek

This unfrequented
⁷³⁵⁷
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,
⁷³⁵⁸
and present
⁷³⁵⁹

Times past, what once I was, and what am now.

O wherefore was my birth from Heav’n foretold

Twice, by an Angel, who at last in sight

Of both my parents all in flames ascended

From off the altar, where an off ’ring burned,

As in a fiery column charioting

His godlike presence, and from some great act

Or benefit revealed to Abraham’s race?

Why was my breeding
⁷³⁶⁰
ordered and prescribed

As of a person separate
⁷³⁶¹
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
⁷³⁶²
in brazen
⁷³⁶³
fetters
⁷³⁶⁴
under task
⁷³⁶⁵

With this Heav’n-gifted strength? O glorious strength

Put to the labor of a beast, debased

Lower than bondslave! 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
⁷³⁶⁶
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
⁷³⁶⁷
through mine own default,
⁷³⁶⁸

Whom have I to complain of but myself?

Who this high gift of strength, committed to me,

In what part lodged, how easily bereft
⁷³⁶⁹
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,
⁷³⁷⁰
burdensome,

Proudly secure,
⁷³⁷¹
yet liable to fall

By weakest subtleties, not made to rule

But to subserve
⁷³⁷²
where wisdom bears
⁷³⁷³
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,
⁷³⁷⁴
which herein

Happ’ly
⁷³⁷⁵
had ends
⁷³⁷⁶
above my reach to know.

Suffices that to me strength is my bane,
⁷³⁷⁷

And proves the source of all my miseries,

So many, and so huge, that each apart

Would ask
⁷³⁷⁸
a life to wail—but 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,
⁷³⁷⁹
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
⁷³⁸⁰
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, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon,

Irrecoverably dark, total eclipse

Without all
⁷³⁸¹
hope of day!

O first created beam, and thou great Word,

“Let there be light, and light was over all,”
⁷³⁸²

Why am I thus bereaved thy prime
⁷³⁸³
decree?

The sun to me is dark

And silent as the moon

When she deserts the night,

Hid in her vacant
⁷³⁸⁴
interlunar cave.
⁷³⁸⁵

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 the sight

To such a tender ball as th’ eye confined?
⁷³⁸⁶

So obvious
⁷³⁸⁷
and so easy to be quenched,
⁷³⁸⁸

And not, as feeling, through all parts diffused

That she might look at will
⁷³⁸⁹
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 sepulcher,
⁷³⁹⁰
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
⁷³⁹¹
more

To all the miseries of life,

Life in captivity

Among inhuman foes.

But who are these? For with joint
⁷³⁹²
pace
⁷³⁹³
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.

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,
⁷³⁹⁴

With languished
⁷³⁹⁵
head unpropped,

As one past hope, abandoned

And by himself given over,

In slavish habit,
⁷³⁹⁶
ill-fitted weeds
⁷³⁹⁷

O’er worn 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 withstand?

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

Ran on embattled
⁷³⁹⁸
armies clad in iron,

And weaponless himself

Made arms ridiculous, useless the forgery
⁷³⁹⁹

Of brazen
⁷⁴⁰⁰
shield and spear, the hammered cuirass,
⁷⁴⁰¹

Chalybean
⁷⁴⁰²
tempered steel, and frock
⁷⁴⁰³
of mail

Adamantean proof?

But safest he who stood aloof,

When insupportably
⁷⁴⁰⁴
his foot advanced

In scorn of their proud arms and warlike tools,

Spurned
⁷⁴⁰⁵
them to death—by troops! The bold Ascalonite
⁷⁴⁰⁶

Fled from his lion ramp,
⁷⁴⁰⁷
old warriors turned
⁷⁴⁰⁸

Their plated
⁷⁴⁰⁹
backs under his heel

Or, grov’ling, soiled
⁷⁴¹⁰
their crested helmets in the dust.

Then with what
⁷⁴¹¹
trivial
⁷⁴¹²
weapon came to hand—

The jaw of a dead ass, his sword of bone—

A thousand fore-skins
⁷⁴¹³
fell, the flower of Palestine,

In Ramath-lechi,
⁷⁴¹⁴
famous to this day.

Then by main
⁷⁴¹⁵
force pulled up, and on his shoulders bore

The Gates of Azza
⁷⁴¹⁶
—post
⁷⁴¹⁷
and massy bar—
⁷⁴¹⁸

Up to the hill by Hebron,
⁷⁴¹⁹
seat of giants old,
⁷⁴²⁰

No journey of a sabbath day,
⁷⁴²¹
and
⁷⁴²²
loaded so:

Like
⁷⁴²³
whom
⁷⁴²⁴
the gentiles feign
⁷⁴²⁵
to bear up Heav’n.
⁷⁴²⁶

Which shall I first bewail,

Thy bondage or lost sight,

Prison within prison

Inseparably dark?

Thou art become (O worst imprisonment!)

The dungeon of thyself! Thy soul

(Which men enjoying sight oft without cause complain)

Imprisoned now indeed,

In real darkness of the body dwells,

Shut up from outward light

T’ incorporate
⁷⁴²⁷
with gloomy night,

For inward light alas

Puts forth no visual beam.

O mirror of our fickle
⁷⁴²⁸
state,

Since man
⁷⁴²⁹
on earth unparalleled!

The rarer
⁷⁴³⁰
thy example stands

By how much from the top of wondrous glory,

Strongest of mortal men,

To lowest pitch of abject fortune thou art fall’n.

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.

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

Dissolves unjointed
⁷⁴³¹
ere it reach my ear.