Page:The Complete Poetical Works of John Milton.djvu/337

 SAMSON AGONISTES

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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 de- cree ?

The Sun to me is dark

And silent as the Moon,

When she deserts the night,

Hid in her vacant interlunar cave.

Since light so necessary is to life, 90

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 the eye confined,

So obvious and so easy to be quenched,

And not, as feeling, through all parts dif- fused,

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, 100

And buried; but, O 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

To all the miseries of life,

Life in captivity

Among inhuman foes.

But who are these ? for with joint pace I hear 1 10

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 be- lief !

See how he lies at random, carelessly dif- fused,

With languished head unpropt,

As one past hope, abandoned, 120

And by himself given over,

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, 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, 130

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, In scorn of their proud arms and warlike

tools, Spurned them to death by troops. The

bold Ascalouite Fled from his lion ramp; old warriors

turned

Their plated backs under his heel, 140

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: 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. 150

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 160

To incorporate with gloomy night; For inward light, alas ! Puts forth no visual beam. O mirror of our fickle state,

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