Read The Annotated Milton: Complete English Poems Online
Authors: John Milton,Burton Raffel
Tags: #Fiction, #General, #Literary Collections, #Poetry, #Classics, #English; Irish; Scottish; Welsh, #English poetry
And last
7744
neglected? How would’st thou insult
7745
When I must live uxorious
7746
to thy will
In perfect
7747
thraldom?
7748
How again betray me,
Bearing my words and doings to the lords
To gloss
7749
upon, and censuring,
7750
frown or smile?
This jail I count
7751
the house of liberty
To thine, whose doors my feet shall never enter!
DAL. Let me approach, at least, and touch thy hand.
SAM. 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 hast’ned widowhood with the gold
Of matrimonial treason. So farewell.
DAL. I see thou art implacable,
7752
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 calmed.
Why do I humble thus myself, and suing
7753
For peace, reap nothing but repulse and hate—
Bid go,
7754
with evil omen and the brand
Of infamy upon my name denounced?
To mix with thy concernments
7755
I desist
Henceforth, nor too much disapprove my own.
Fame if not double-faced is double-mouthed,
And with contrary blast proclaims most deeds.
On both his wings, one black, th’ other white,
Bears greatest names in his wild airy flight.
My name perhaps among the circumcised
7756
In Dan, in Judah, and the bordering tribes,
To all posterity may stand defamed,
With malediction mentioned, and the blot
Of falsehood most unconjugal traduced.
7757
But in my country, where I most desire,
In Ecron, Gaza, Asdod, and in Gath
I shall be named among the famousest
Of women, sung at solemn festivals,
Living and dead recorded,
7758
who to save
Her country from a fierce destroyer chose
Above
7759
the faith of wedlock-bands
7760
—my tomb
With odors
7761
visited and annual flowers.
Not less renowned than in Mount Ephraim
Jael, who with inhospitable guile
Smote Sisera sleeping through the temples nailed.
7762
Nor shall I count it heinous
7763
to enjoy
The public marks of honor and reward
Conferred upon me, for the piety
Which to my country I was judged t’ have shown.
At this whoever envies or repines
7764
I leave him to his lot, and like my own.
CHOR. She’s gone, a manifest
7765
serpent by her sting
Discovered in the end, till now concealed.
SAM. So let her go. God sent her to debase me
And aggravate my folly, who committed 1000
To such a viper his most sacred trust
Of secrecy, my safety, and my life.
CHOR. Yet beauty, though injurious, hath strange power,
After offence returning, to regain
Love once possessed, nor can be easily
Repulsed, without much inward passion felt
And secret sting of amorous remorse.
SAM. Love-quarrels oft in pleasing concord end.
Not wedlock-treachery, endangering life.
CHOR. It is not virtue, wisdom, valor, wit, 1010
Strength, comeliness of shape, or amplest merit
That woman’s love can win or long inherit,
7766
But what it is, hard is to say,
Harder to hit
7767
(Which way soever men refer
7768
it),
Much like thy riddle, Samson,
7769
in one day
Or seven, though one should musing sit.
If any of these or all, the Timnian bride
Had not so soon preferred
Thy paranymph,
7770
worthless to thee compared, 1020
Successor in thy bed,
Nor both
7771
so loosely disallied
Their nuptials, nor this last so treacherously
Had shorn the fatal
7772
harvest of thy head.
Is it for that
7773
such outward ornament
Was lavished on their sex, that inward gifts
Were left for haste unfinished, judgment scant,
7774
Capacity not raised
7775
to apprehend
Or value what is best
In choice, but oftest to affect
7776
the wrong? 1030
Or was too much of self-love mixed,
Of constancy no root
7777
infixed,
7778
That either they love nothing, or not long?
What e’er it be, to wisest men and best
Seeming at first all Heav’nly under virgin veil,
Soft, modest, meek, demure,
7779
Once joined the contrary she proves, a thorn
Intestine, far within defensive
7780
arms
A cleaving
7781
mischief, in
7782
his way to virtue
Adverse and turbulent,
7783
or by her charms 1040
Draws him awry,
7784
enslaved
With dotage,
7785
and his sense depraved
7786
To folly and shameful deeds which ruin ends.
What pilot so expert but needs must wreck,
Embarked with such a steer-mate at the helm?
Favored of Heav’n who finds
One
7787
virtuous (rarely found),
That in domestic good combines.
7788
Happy that house! His way to peace is smooth.
But virtue which breaks through all opposition, 1050
And all temptation can remove
Most shines and most is acceptable above.
Therefore God’s universal Law
Gave to the man despotic
7789
power
Over his female in due
7790
awe,
7791
Nor from that right to part
7792
an hour,
So shall he least confusion draw
On his whole life, not swayed
By female usurpation, nor dismayed. 1060
But had we best retire, I see a storm?
SAM. Fair days have oft contracted
7795
wind and rain.
CHOR. But this another kind of tempest brings.
SAM. Be less abstruse,
7796
my riddling days are past.
CHOR. Look now for no enchanting voice, nor fear
The bait of honeyed words. A rougher tongue
Draws hitherward. I know him by his stride,
The giant Harapha
7797
of Gath, his look
Haughty as is his pile
7798
high-built and proud.
Comes he in peace? What wind hath blown him hither 1070
I less conjecture
7799
than when first I saw
The sumptuous
7800
Dalila floating this way.
His habit
7801
carries peace, his brow defiance.
SAM. Or
7802
peace or not, alike to me he comes.
CHOR. His fraught
7803
we soon shall know. He now arrives.
HAR. I come not, Samson, to condole thy chance,
7804
As these perhaps, yet wish it had not been,
Though for no friendly intent. I am of Gath.
Men call me Harapha, of stock renowned
As Og
7805
or Anak
7806
and the Emims
7807
old 1080
That Kiriathaim
7808
held: thou knowst me now,
If thou at all art known. Much I have heard
Of thy prodigious
7809
might and feats performed,
Incredible to me, in this displeased,
That I was never present on the place
Of those encounters, where we might have tried
7810
Each other’s force in camp
7811
or listed field:
7812
And now am come to see of whom such noise
Hath walked about, and each limb to survey,
If thy appearance answer loud report.
7813
1090
SAM. The way to know were not to see but taste.
HAR. Dost thou already single
7814
me? I thought
Gyves
7815
and the mill had tamed thee. O that fortune
Had brought me to the field where thou art famed
T’ have wrought such wonders with an ass’s jaw!
I should have forced thee soon wish other arms,
Or left thy carcass where the ass lay thrown.
So had the glory of prowess been recovered
To Palestine, won by a Philistine
From
7816
the unforeskinned race,
7817
of whom thou bear’st 1100
The highest name for valiant acts. That honor
Certain t’ have won by mortal
7818
duel from thee,
I lose, prevented by thy eyes put out.
SAM. Boast not of what thou would’st have done, but do
What then thou would’st. Thou see’st it in thy hand.
HAR. To combat with a blind man I disdain.
And thou hast need much washing to be
7819
touched.
SAM. Such usage as your honorable lords
Afford me, assassinated
7820
and betrayed,
Who durst not with their whole united powers 1110
In fight withstand me single and unarmed,
Nor in the house with chamber
7821
ambushes
Close-banded
7822
durst attack me—no, not sleeping—
Till they had hired a woman with their gold,
Breaking her marriage faith to circumvent
7823
me.
Therefore without feigned shifts
7824
let be assigned
Some narrow place enclosed, where sight may give thee
(Or rather flight) no great advantage on me.
Then put on all thy gorgeous
7825
arms,
7826
thy helmet
And brigandine
7827
of brass, thy broad habergeon,
7828
1120
Vant-brass
7829
and greves,
7830
and gauntlet,
7831
add thy spear,
A weaver’s beam,
7832
and seven-times-folded
7833
shield.
I only with an oaken staff will meet thee,
And raise such out-cries on thy clattered
7834
iron
Which long shall not with-hold me from thy head,
That in a little time, while breath remains thee,
Thou oft shalt wish thyself at Gath to boast