CXI.-DESTRUCTION OF THE PHILISTINES.
1. OCCASIONS drew me early to the city;
And, as the gates I entered with sunrise,
The morning trumpets festival proclaimed
Through each high street: little I had despatched,
When all abroad was rumored that this day
Samson should be brought forth, to show the People
Proof of his mighty strength in feats and games.
I sorrowed at his captive state, but minded
Not to be absent at that spectacle.
2. The building was a spacious theatre
Half round, on two main pillars vaulted high,
With seats where all the lords, and each degree
Of sort, might sit, in order to behold:
The other side was open, where the throng
On banks and scaffolds under sky might stand:
I among these aloof obscurely stood.
The feast and noon grew high, and sacrifice
Had filled their hearts with mirth, high cheer, and wine,
When to their sports they turned. Immediately
Was Samson as a public servant brought,
In their state livery clad: before him pipes,
And timbrels,-on each side went armed guards,
Both horse and foot,-before him and behind,
Archers, and slingers, cataphracts and spears.
3. At sight of him, the People with a shout
Rifted the air, clamoring their god with praise,
Who had made their dreadful enemy their thrall.
He, patient, but undaunted, where they led him,
Came to the place; and what was set before him,
Which without help of eye might be essayed,
To heave, pull, draw or break, he still performed
All with incredible, stupendous force:
None daring to appear antagonist.
At length, for intermission sake, they led him
Between the pillars: he his guide requested
(For so from such as nearer stood we heard),
As over-tired, to let him lean a while
With both his arms on those two massy pillars
That to the arched roof gave main support.
4. He, unsuspicious, led him: which when Samson
Felt in his arms, with head a while inclined,
And eyes fast fixed he stood, as one who prayed,
Or some great matter in his mind revolved:
At last with head erect, thus cried aloud :-
"Hitherto, Lords, what your commands imposed
I have performed, as reason was, obeying,
Not without wonder or delight beheld:
Now of my own accord such other trial
I mean to show you of my strength, yet greater,
As with amaze shall strike all who behold."
5. This uttered, straining all his nerves, he bowed:
As with the force of winds and waters pent,
When mountains tremble, those two massy pillars
With horrible convulsion to and fro
He tugged, he shook, till down they came, and drew
The whole roof after them, with burst of thunder
Upon the heads of all who sat beneath,
Lords, ladies, captains, counsellors, or priests,
Their choice nobility and flower, not only
Of this, but each Philistian city round,
Met from all parts to solemnize this feast.
Samson, with these inmixed, inevitably
Pulled down the same destruction on himself:
The vulgar only 'scaped, who stood without.
CXII.--SATAN'S ENCOUNTER WITH DEATH.
1. BLACK it stood as night,
Fierce as ten furies, terrible as hell,
And shook a dreadful dart: what seemed his head
The likeness of a kingly crown had on.
Satan was now at hand; and from his seat
The monster moving onward came as fast,
With horrid strides: hell trembled as he strode.
The undaunted fiend what this might be admired,
Admired, not feared: God and His Son except,
Created thing naught valued he, nor shunned.
And with disdainful look thus first began:-
2. "Whence, and what art thou, execrable shape!
That darest, though grim and terrible, advance
Thy miscreated front athwart my way
To yonder gates? Through them I mean to pass,
That be assured, without leave asked of thee:
Retire, or taste thy folly; and learn by proof,
Hell-born! not to contend with spirits of Heaven!"
To whom the goblin, full of wrath, replied :—
Art thou that traitor angel, art thou he,
Who first broke peace in Heaven, and faith, till then
Unbroken, and in proud rebellious arms
Drew after him the third part of Heaven's sons
Conjured against the Highest; for which both thou
And they, outcast from God, are here condemned
To waste eternal days in woe and pain?
And reckon'st thou thyself with spirits of Heaven,
Hell-doomed! and breathest defiance here and scorn,
Where I reign king, and, to enrage thee more
Thy king and lord! Back to thy punishment,
False fugitive! and to thy speed add wings:
Lest with a whip of scorpions I pursue
Thy lingering, or with one stroke of this dart
Strange horror seize thee, and pangs unfelt before."
4. So spake the grisly terror; and in shape,
So speaking, and so threatening, grew ten-fold
More dreadful and deform: on the other side,
Incensed with indignation, Satan stood
Unterrified, and like a comet burned,
That fires the length of Ophiuchus huge
In the Arctic sky, and from his horrid hair
Shakes pestilence and war. Each at the head
Levelled his deadly aim: their fatal hands
No second stroke intend; and such a frown
Each cast at the other, as when two black clouds,
With Heaven's artillery fraught, come rattling on
Over the Caspian; then stand front to front
Hovering a space, till winds the signal blow
To join their dark encounter in mid air:
5. So frowned the mighty combatants, that hell
Grew darker at their frown: so matched they stood;
For never but once more was either like
To meet so great a foe; and now great deeds
Had been achieved, whereof all hell had rung,
Had not the snaky sorceress that sat
Fast by hell-gate, and kept the fatal key,
Risen, and with hideous cry rushed between.
CXIII.-BELSHAZZAR'S FEAST.
1. Joy holds her court in great Belshazzar's hall,
Where his proud lords attend their monarch's call.
The rarest dainties of the teeming East
Provoke the revel and adorn the feast.
And now the monarch rises :- -"Pour," he cries
"To the great gods, the Assyrian deities!
Pour forth libations of the rosy wine
To Nebo, Bel, and all the powers divine!
Those golden vessels crown, which erewhile stood
Fast by the oracle of Judah's God,
Till that accursed race-"
Why dost thou start, with livid cheek?-why fling
The untasted goblet from thy trembling hand?
Why shake thy joints, thy feet forget to stand?
Why roams thine eye, which seems in wild amaze
To shun some object, yet returns to gaze,-
Then shrinks again appalled, as if the tomb
Had sent a spirit from its inmost gloom?
3. Awful the horror, when Belshazzar raised
His arm, and pointed where the vision blazed!
For see! enrobed in flame, a mystic shade,
As of a hand, a red right-hand, displayed!
And, slowly moving o'er the wall, appear
Letters of fate, and characters of fear.
In deathlike silence grouped, the revellers all
Fix their glazed eyeballs on the illumined wall.
See! now the vision brightens,-now 'tis gone,
Like meteor flash, like Heaven's own lightning flown!
But, though the hand hath vanished, what it writ
Is uneffaced. Who will interpret it?
In vain the sages try their utmost skill:
The mystic letters are unconstrued still.
4. "Quick, bring the Prophet!-let his tongue proclaim
The mystery of that visionary flame."
The holy Prophet came, and stood upright,
With brow serene, before Belshazzar's sight.
The monarch pointed trembling to the wall:
"Behold the portents that our heart appal!
Interpret them, O Prophet! thou shalt know
What gifts Assyria's monarch can bestow."
5. Unutterably awful was the eye
Which met the monarch's; and the stern reply
Fell heavy on his soul: Thy gifts withhold,
Nor tempt the Spirit of the Law, with gold.
Belshazzar, hear what these dread words reveal!
That lot on which the Eternal sets his seal.
Thy kingdom numbered, and thy glory flown,
The Mede and Persian revel on thy throne.
Weighed in the balance, thou hast kicked the beam :
See to yon Western sun the lances gleam,
Which, ere his Orient rays adorn the sky,
Thy blood shall sully with a crimson dye."
In the dire carnage of that night's dread hour,
Crushed mid the ruins of his crumbling power,
Belshazzar fell beneath an unknown blow-
His kingdom wasted, and his pride laid low !
CXIV. THE NEW-YEAR'S NIGHT OF AN UNHAPPY MAN. RICHTER.
1. ON new-year's night, an old man stood at his window, and looked, with a glance of fearful despair, up to the immovable, unfading heaven, and down upon the still, pure, white earth, on which no one was now so joyless and sleepless as he. His grave stood near him: it was covered only with the snows of age, not with the verdure of youth; and he brought with him out of a whole, rich life, nothing but errors, sins, and diseases; a wasted body; a desolate soul; a heart full of poison; and an old age full of repentance. The happy days of his early youth passed before him, like a procession of specters, and brought back to him that lovely morning, when his father first placed him on the cross-way of life, where the right hand led by the sunny paths of virtue, into a large and quiet land, full of light and harvests; and the left plunged by the subterranean walks of vice, into a black cave, full of distilling poison, of hissing snakes, and of dark, sultry vapors.
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