No More Learning

This day a solemn feast the people hold
To Dagon, their sea-idol, and forbid
Laborious works. Hence, with leave
Retiring from the popular noise, I seek
This unfrequented place to find some ease--
Oh, wherefore was my birth from Heaven foretold
Twice by an angel, if I must die
Betrayed, captive, and both my eyes put out,
Made of my enemies the scorn and gaze?
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, which might in part my grief have eased.
O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon,
Irrevocably dark, total eclipse
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 decree?
The Sun to me is dark
And silent as the Moon,
When she deserts the night,
Hid in her vacant inter-lunar cave.

CHORUS: 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,
With languished head unpropt,
As one past hope, abandoned.
Which shall I fast bewail--
Thy bondage or lost sight,
Prison within prison
Inseparably dark?
Thou art become (O worst imprisonment! )
The dungeon of thyself;
To lowest pitch of abject fortune thou are fallen.

SAMSON: I hear the sound of words; their sense the air
Dissolves unjointed ere it reach my ear.

CHORUS: He speaks; let us draw nigh.
Matchless in might,
The glory late of Israel, now the grief!
We come, thy friends and neighbours not unknown,
From Eshtaol and Zora's fruitful vale,
To visit or bewail thee.

SAMSON: Your coming, friends, revives me.
Tell me, friends,
Am I not sung and proverbed for a fool
In every street?

CHORUS: Wisest men
Have erred, and by bad women been deceived;
And shall again, pretend they ne'er so wise.
In seeking just occasion to provoke
The Philistine, thy country's enemy,
Thou never wast remiss, I bear thee witness.
But see! here comes thy reverend sire,
With careful step, locks white as down,
OLD MANOA: advise
Forthwith how thou ought'st to receive him.

MANOA: Brethren and men of Dan, if old respect,
As I suppose, towards your once gloried friend,
My son, now captive, hither hath informed
Your younger feet, while mine, cast back with age,
Came lagging after, say if he be here.

CHORUS: As signal now in low dejected state
As erst in highest, behold him where he lies.

MANOA: O miserable change! Is this the man,
That invincible Samson, far renowned,
The dread of Israel's foes?

SAMSON: Nothing of all these evils hath befallen me
But justly.

MANOA: True; but thou bear'st
Enough, and more, the burden of that fault;
Bitterly hast thou paid, and still art paying,
That rigid score. A worse thing yet remains;
This day the Philistines a popular feast
Here celebrate in Gaza, and proclaim
Great pomp, and sacrifice, and praises loud,
To Dagon, as their god who hath delivered
Thee, Samson, bound and blind, into their hands.

SAMSON: Father, I do acknowledge and confess
That I this honour, I this pomp, have brought
To Dagon, and advanced his praises high
Among the heathen round.