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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,

Harder to hit,

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? I see a storm.

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.

but taste.

Sams. The way to know were not to see,
Har. Dost thou already single me? I thought
Gyves and the mill had tamed thee. O that fortune

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