The Gates of Azza, Poft, and maffie Bar Thy Bondage or loft Sight, Prifon within Prifon Infeparably dark? Thou art become (O worst imprisonment!) The Dungeon of thy felf; thy Soul (Which Men enjoying fight oft without cause com Imprison'd now indeed, In real darkness of the body dwells, Shut up from outward light To incorporate with gloomy night; Puts forth no visual beam. O mirror of our fickle ftate, The rarer thy example stands, [plain) 160 By how much from the top of wondrous glory, To lowest pitch of abject fortune thou art fall'n. Whom long descent of birth Or the fphear of fortune raises; 170 But thee whose strength, while vertue was her mate, Might have fubdu'd the Earth, Univerfally crown'd with highest praises. Sam. I hear the found of words, thir sense the air Diffolves unjointed e're it reach my ear. Chor. Hee fpeaks, let us draw nigh. Matchlefs in might, 179 The glory late of Ifrael, now the grief; To vifit or bewail thee, or if better, Salve to thy Sores, apt words have power to fwage And are as Balm to fefter'd wounds. 190 Sam. Your coming, Friends, revives me, for I learn Now of my own experience, not by talk, How counterfeit a coin they are who friends Bear in their Superscription (of the most I would be understood) in profperous days They swarm, but in adverse withdraw their head Not to be found, though fought. Yee fee, O friends, How many evils have enclos'd me round; Yet that which was the worst now least afflicts me, Blindness, for had I fight, confus'd with shame, How could I once look up, or heave the head, Who like a foolish Pilot have shipwrack't, My Veffel trusted to me from above, Gloriously rigg'd; and for a word, a tear, Fool, have divulg'd the secret gift of God To a deceitful Woman: tell me Friends, Am I not fung and proverbd for a Fool In every street, do they not fay, how well Are come upon him his deserts? yet why? Immeasurable strength they might behold In me, of wisdom nothing more then mean; This with the other should, at least, have paird, These two proportiond ill drove me transverse. Chor. Tax not divine difpofal, wifeft Men 200 210 Have err'd, and by bad Women been deceiv'd; Who haft of forrow thy full load befides; 220 Sam. The first I faw at Timna, and she pleas'd Chor. In feeking juft occafion to provoke 240 Sam. That fault I take not on me, but transfer On Ifrael's Governours, and Heads of Tribes, Who seeing those great acts which God had done Singly by me against their Conquerours 249 Acknowledg'd not, or not at all confider'd 260 270 How frequent to defert him, and at last 280 Had dealt with Jephtha, who by argument, But Gods propos'd deliverance not so. Chor. Juft are the ways of God, And justifiable to Men; Unless there be who think not God at all, If any be, they walk obfcure; For of fuch Doctrine never was there School, But the heart of the Fool, And no man therein Doctor but himself. 291 301 Yet more there be who doubt his ways not just, As to his own edicts, found contradicting, Then give the rains to wandring thought, Regardless of his glories diminution; Till by thir own perplexities involv'd They ravel more, still less refolv'd, But never find self-satisfying solution. |