144 BOYS OF THE BIBLE.

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 bereaved 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 confined,

So obvious and so easy to be quench’d?
And not, as feeling, through all parts diffused,
That she might look at will through every port:
Then had I not been thus exiled 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, yetnotexempt

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

At my affliction, and perhaps t’ insult,

Their daily practice to afflict me more.

Long as this extract is, it will well have served its pur-
pose if it should inspire the young reader to ponder carefully
the whole of this matchless poem.

The end draws nigh. The Philistines hold a grand
festival in the temple of Dagon to celebrate the capture of
Samson. They bring Samson forth to make sport for them.
Did he ask them riddles? Did he make puns or present