Met from all parts to solemnize this feast. Cho. O dearly bought revenge, yet glorious! Living or dying thou hast fulfill'd The work for which thou wast foretold To Israel, and now liest victorious Among thy slain, self-kill'd, Not willingly, but tangled in the fold Of dire necessity, whose law in death conjoin'd 1 Semicho. While their hearts were jocund and sublime, Drunk with idolatry, drunk with wine, And fat regorged of bulls and goats, And urged them on with mad desire Their own destruction to come speedy upon them. Fallen into wrath divine, As their own ruin on themselves to invite, And with blindness eternal struck. 2 Semicho. But he, though blind of sight, Despised, and thought extinguish'd quite, With inward eyes illuminated, His fiery virtue roused From under ashes into sudden flame; And as an evening dragon came, Assailant on the perched roosts And nests in order ranged Of tame villatic fowl; but as an eagle His cloudless thunder bolted on their heads. So virtue, given for lost, Depress'd and overthrown as seem'd, Like that self-begotten bird In the Arabian woods embost, That no second knows, nor third, And lay erewhile a holocaust, From out her ashy womb now teem'd, Revives, reflourishes, then vigorous most And, though her body die, her fame survives, A secular bird, ages of lives. Man. Come, come, no time for lamentation now, Nor much more cause; Samson hath quit himself Like Samson, and heroicly hath finish'd A life heroic, on his enemies Fully revenged; hath left them years of mourning, Nothing is here for tears, nothing to wail Or knock the breast; no weakness, no contempt, Dispraise, or blame; nothing but well and fair, And what may quiet us in a death so noble. Let us go find the body where it lies Soak'd in his enemies' blood, and from the stream, Will send for all my kindred, all my friends, To fetch him hence, and solemnly attend, With silent obsequy, and funeral train, Home to his father's house: there will I build him A monument, and plant it round with shade Oft he seems to hide his face, But unexpectedly returns, And to his faithful champion hath in place Bore witness gloriously; whence Gaza mourns, And all that band them to resist His uncontrollable intent; His servants he, with new acquist Of true experience from this great event, |