[Samson's Opening Speech]
 A little onward lend thy guiding hand
 To these dark steps, a little further on;
 For yonder bank hath choice of sun or shade,
 There I am wont to sit, when any chance
 Relieves me from my task of servile toil,
 Daily in the common prison else enjoin'd me,
 Where I a prisoner chain'd, scarce freely draw
 The air imprison'd also, close and damp,
 Unwholesome draught: but here I feel amends,
 The breath of Heav'n fresh-blowing, pure and sweet,
 With day-spring born; here leave me to respire.
 This day a solemn feast the people hold
 To Dagon, their sea-idol, and forbid
 Laborious works; unwillingly this rest
 Their superstition yields me; hence with leave
 Retiring from the popular noise, I seek
 This unfrequented place to find some ease;
 Ease to the body some, none to the mind
 From restless thoughts, that like a deadly swarm
 Of hornets arm'd, no sooner found alone,
 But rush upon me thronging, and present
 Times past, what once I was, and what am now.
 O wherefore was my birth from Heaven foretold
 Twice by an angel, who at last in sight
 Of both my parents all in flames ascended
 From off the altar, where an off'ring burn'd,
 As in a fiery column charioting
 His godlike presence, and from some great act
 Of benefit reveal'd to Abraham's race?
 Why was my breeding order'd and prescrib'd
 As of a person separate to God,
 Design'd for great exploits; if I must die
 Betray'd, captiv'd, and both my eyes put out,
 Made of my enemies the scorn and gaze;
 To grind in brazen fetters under task
 With this Heav'n-gifted strength? O glorious strength
 Put to the labour of a beast, debas'd
 Lower than bondslave! Promise was that I
 Should Israel from Philistian yoke deliver;
 Ask for this great deliverer now, and find him
 Eyeless in Gaza at the mill with slaves,
 Himself in bonds under Philistian yoke.
 Yet stay, let me not rashly call in doubt
 Divine prediction; what if all foretold
 Had been fulfill'd but through mine own default,
 Whom have I to complain of but myself?
 Who this high gift of strength committed to me,
 In what part lodg'd, how easily bereft me,
 Under the seal of silence could not keep,
 But weakly to a woman must reveal it
 O'ercome with importunity and tears.
 O impotence of mind, in body strong!
 But what is strength without a double share
 Of wisdom? vast, unwieldy, burdensome,
 Proudly secure, yet liable to fall
 By weakest subtleties, not made to rule,
 But to subserve where wisdom bears command.
 God, when he gave me strength, to show withal
 How slight the gift was, hung it in my hair.
 But peace, I must not quarrel with the will
 Of highest dispensation, which herein
 Haply had ends above my reach to know:
 Suffices that to me strength is my bane,
 And proves the source of all my miseries;
 So many, and so huge, that each apart
 Would ask a life to wail, but chief of all,
 O loss of sight, of thee I most complain!
 Blind among enemies, 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
 Annull'd, which might in part my grief have eas'd,
 Inferior to the vilest now become
 Of man or worm; the vilest here excel me:
 They creep, yet see, I, dark in light, expos'd
 To daily fraud, contempt, abuse, and wrong,
 Within doors, or without, still as a fool,
 In power of others, never in my own;
 Scarce half I seem to live, dead more than half.
 O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon,
 Irrecoverably 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 bereav'd thy prime decree?
 The sun to me is dark
 And silent as the moon,
 When she deserts the night,
 Hid in her vacant interlunar cave.
 Since light so necessary is to life,
 And almost life itself, if it be true
 That light is in the soul,
 She all in every part, why was the sight
 To such a tender ball as th'eye confin'd?
 So obvious and so easy to be quench'd,
 And not as feeling through all parts diffus'd,
 That she might look at will through every pore?
 Then had I not been thus exil'd from light,
 As in the land of darkness, yet in light,
 To live a life half dead, a living death,
 And buried; but O yet more miserable!
 Myself my sepulchre, a moving grave;
 Buried, yet not exempt
 By privilege of death and burial
 From worst of other evils, pains and wrongs;
 But made hereby obnoxious more
 To all the miseries of life,
 Life in captivity
 Among inhuman foes.
 But who are these? for with joint pace I hear
 The tread of many feet steering this way;
 Perhaps my enemies who come to stare