The Annotated Milton: Complete English Poems (154 page)

Read The Annotated Milton: Complete English Poems Online

Authors: John Milton,Burton Raffel

Tags: #Fiction, #General, #Literary Collections, #Poetry, #Classics, #English; Irish; Scottish; Welsh, #English poetry

BOOK: The Annotated Milton: Complete English Poems
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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.

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