If, in my flower of youth and strength, when all men Loved, honour'd, fear'd me, thou alone couldst hate me Thy husband, slight me, sell me, and forego me; How wouldst thou use me now, blind, and thereby Deceivable, in most things as a child
Helpless, thence easily contemn'd and scorn'd, And last neglected? How wouldst thou insult, When I must live uxorious to thy will In perfect thraldom, how again betray me, Bearing my words and doings to the lords To gloss upon, and, censuring, frown or smile! This jail I count the house of liberty
To thine, whose doors my feet shall never enter. Dal. Let me approach at least and touch thy hand. Sams. Not for thy life, lest fierce remembrance wake My sudden rage to tear thee joint by joint. At distance I forgive thee, go with that, Bewail thy falsehood, and the pious works It hath brought forth to make thee memorable Among illustrious women, faithful wives! Cherish thy hasten'd widowhood with the gold Of matrimonial treason: so farewell.
Dal. I see thou art implacable, more deaf To prayers than winds and seas, yet winds to seas Are reconciled at length, and sea to shore: Thy anger unappeasable still rages, Eternal tempest never to be calm'd.
Why do I humble thus myself, and, suing For peace, reap nothing but repulse and hate? Bid go with evil omen, and the brand Of infamy upon my name denounced? To mix with thy concernments I desist Henceforth, nor too much disapprove my own. Fame, if not double-faced, is double-mouth'd, And with contrary blast proclaims most deeds; On both his wings, one black, the other white, Bears greatest names in his wild aëry flight. My name perhaps among the circumcised, In Dan, in Judah, and the bordering tribes, To all posterity may stand defamed, With malediction mention'd, and the blot Of falsehood most unconjugal traduced. But in my country, where I most desire, In Ecron, Gaza, Ashdod, and in Gath, I shall be named among the famousest Of women, sung at solemn festivals, Living and dead recorded, who, to save Her country from a fierce destroyer, chose Above the faith of wedlock-bands, my tomb With odours visited and annual flowers; Not less renown'd than in Mount Ephraim Jael, who, with inhospitable guile,
Smote Sisera sleeping through the temples nail'd. Nor shall I count it heinous to enjoy
The public marks of honour and reward, Conferr'd upon me for the piety
Which to my country I was judged to have shown. At this who ever envies or repines,
I leave him to his lot, and like my own.
Chor. She's gone, a manifest serpent, by her sting Discover'd in the end, till now conceal'd.
Sams. So let her go; God sent her to debase me, And aggravate my folly, who committed
To such a viper his most sacred trust
Of secresy, my safety, and my life.
Chor. Yet beauty, though injurious, hath strange power, After offence returning, to regain
Love once possess'd, nor can be easily
Repulsed, without much inward passion felt,
And secret sting of amorous remorse.
Sams. Love-quarrels oft in pleasing concord end;
Not wedlock-treachery endangering life.
Chor. It is not virtue, wisdom, valour, wit, Strength, comeliness of shape, or amplest merit, That woman's love can win, or long inherit; But what it is, hard is to say,
Which way soever men refer it,
Much like thy riddle, Samson, in one day Or seven, though one should musing sit.
If any of these, or all, the Timnian bride Had not so soon preferr'd
Thy paranymph, worthless to thee compared, Successor in thy bed,
Nor both so loosely disallied
Their nuptials, nor this last so treacherously
Had shorn the fatal harvest of thy head,
Is it for that such outward ornament
Was lavish'd on their sex, that inward gifts Were left for haste unfinish'd, judgment scant, Capacity not raised to apprehend
Or value what is best
In choice, but oftest to affect the wrong? Or was too much of self-love mix'd,
Of constancy no root infix'd,
That either they love nothing, or not long? Whate'er it be to wisest men and best Seeming at first all heavenly under virgin vale Soft, modest, meek, demure,
Once join'd, the contrary she proves, a thorn Intestine, far within defensive arms
A cleaving mischief, in his way to virtue Adverse and turbulent, or by her charms Draws him awry, enslaved
With dotage, and his sense depraved
To folly and shameful deeds, which ruin ends. What pilot so expert but needs must wreck, Embark'd with such a steers-mate at the helm? Favour'd of heaven who finds
One virtuous, rarely found,
That in domestic good combines ;
Happy that house! his way to peace is smooth; But virtue, which breaks through all opposition, And all temptation can remove,
Most shines, and most is acceptable above Therefore God's universal law
Gave to the man despotic power
Over his female in due awe,
Nor from that right to part an hour,
Smile she or lour :
So shall he least confusion draw
On his whole life, not sway'd
By female usurpation, or dismay'd. But had we best retire?
Sams. Fair days have oft contracted wind and rain. Chor. But this another kind of tempest brings. Sams. Be less abtruse, my riddling days are past. Chor. Look now for no enchanting voice, nor fear The bait of honey'd words; a rougher tongue Draws hitherward; I know him by his stride, The giant Harapha of Gath, his look
Haughty, as is his pile high-built and proud.
Comes he in peace? What wind hath blown him hither I less conjecture, than when first I saw
The sumptuous Dalila floating this way:
His habit carries peace, his brow defiance.
Sams. Or peace or not, alike to me he comes.
Chor. His fraught we now shall know, he now arrives. Har. I come not, Samson, to condole thy chance,
As these perhaps, yet wish it had not been, Though for no friendly intent. I am of Gath, Men call me Harapha, of stock renown'd As Og, or Anak, and the Emims old That Kiriathaim held; thou know'st me now If thou at all art known. Much I have heard Of thy prodigious might, and feats perform'd, Incredible to me, in this displeased,
That I was never present on the place
Of those encounters, where we might have tried Each other's force in camp or listed field; And now am come to see of whom such noise Hath walk'd about, and each limb to survey, If thy appearance answer loud report.
Sams. The way to know were not to see, but taste. Har. Dost thou already single me? I thought Gyves and the mill had tamed thee. O that fortune
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