day a solemn feast the people hold Dagon, their sea-idol, and forbid Laborious works, unwillingly this rest Their superstition yields me; hence with leave Of both my parents all in flames ascended His god-like presence, and from some great act Design'd for great exploits, if I must die Betray'd, captived, and both my eyes put out, To grind in brazen fetters under task With this heav'n-gifted strength? O'glorious strength Lower than bondslave! Promise was that I Had been fulfill'd but through mine own default, 1 Judges xiii. 3, 11–20. viere visdom sears ammami. ene tragh a now withal ving 1 in ny lair. mst 26 Marte with the vil anch. viis lepin A tere ny reach a know: eshe me fail ny miseries, a life to val; but thief of all, -ren ir beggary, or decrepit age! the prime work of Goo to me's extinct, mul her various objects of delight tanuli, which might in part my grief have eased, ertor to the vilest now become : man or worm, the vilest here excel me; They creep, yet see, I dark in light exposed daily fraud, contempt, abuse, and wrong. Vithin doors, or without, still as a fool 1 power of others, never in my own; Searce half I seem to live, dead more than half. dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon, rrecoverably dark, total eclipse Without all hope of day! reated beam, and thou great Word, light, and light was over all; us bereaved thy prime decree? is dark the moon,1 or near the change, and in conjunction with the sun. When she deserts the night Hid in her vacant interlunar cave. She all in every part; why was the sight By privilege of death and burial From worst of other evils, pains, and wrongs, To all the miseries of life, Life in captivity Among inhuman foes. But who are these? for with joint pace I hear O change beyond report, thought, or belief! As one past hope, abandon'd, As by himself given over; In slavish habit, ill-fitted weeds O'er-worn and soil'd; Or do my eyes misrepresent ? can this be he, That heroic, that renown'd, 1 Stretched out. In Ramasa-iecht, Then by main for The gates of Azza, mons to in day: poll ́i mp and on his shoulders bore post, and massy tar, Up to the hill by Hebron, seat of giants oll No journey of a Sabbath day, and loaded so; Like whom the Gentiles feign to bear up heav'n.* 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, 1 The Chalybes were famous in the old the best tempered steel was xv. 17. Ramath-lechi means the lifting up, or casting away, of the jaw-bone. 5 Another name for Gaza. The city of the Anakims, who were giants. Judges xv. 13, 14, Num. xiii. 33. 7 A Sabbath day's journey was, with the Jews, three-quarters of a geographical mile. 8 Atlas. |