No More Learning

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. The contest is now
'Twixt God and Dagon. Dagon hath presumed,
Me overthrown, to enter lists with God.
Dagon must stoop, and shall ere long receive
Such a discomfit as shall quite despoil him
Of all these boasted trophies won on me,
And with confusion blank his worshippers.

MANOA: But for thee what shall be done?
Thou must not in the meanwhile, here forgot,
Lie in this miserable, loathsome plight,
Neglected. I already have made way
To some Philistine lords, with whom to treat
About thy ransom.

SAMSON: Spare that proposal, father; let me here
As I deserve, pay on my punishment,
And expiate, if possible, my crime.

MANOA: Be penitent, and for thy fault contrite;
But act not in thy own affliction, son.
Repent the sin; but if the punishment
Thou canst avoid, self-preservation bids.

SAMSON: Nature within me seems
In all her functions weary of herself;
My race of glory run, and race of shame,
And I shall shortly be with them that rest.

MANOA: I, however,
Must not omit a father's timely care
To prosecute the means of thy deliverance
By ransom, or how else.

CHORUS: But who is this? what thing of sea or land--
Female of sex it seems--
That, so bedecked, ornate, and gay,
Comes this way sailing?
Some rich Philistian matron she may seem;
And now at nearer view no other certain
Than Dalila, thy wife.

SAMSON: My wife!