Paradise Lost: The Arguments - WW Norton & Company

Samson Agonistes 19
Here celebrate in Gaza, and proclaim 435
Great pomp and sacrifice and praises loud,
To Dagon, as their god who hath delivered
Thee, Samson, bound and blind, into their hands,
Them out of thine, who slew’st them many a slain.
So Dagon shall be magnified, 8 and God, 440
Besides whom is no god, compared with idols,
Disglorified, blasphemed, and had in scorn
By th’ idolatrous rout amidst their wine;
Which to have come to pass by means of thee,
Samson, of all thy sufferings think the heaviest, 445
Of all reproach the most with shame that ever
Could have befallen thee and thy father’s house.
samson. Father, I do acknowledge and confess
That I this honor, I this pomp, have brought
To Dagon, and advanced his praises high 450
Among the heathen round; to God have brought
Dishonor, obloquy, and oped the mouths
Of idolists and atheists; have brought scandal
To Israel, diffidence 9 of God, and doubt
In feeble hearts, propense 1 enough before 455
To waver, or fall off and join with idols:
Which is my chief affliction, shame and sorrow,
The anguish of my soul, that suffers not
Mine eye to harbor sleep, or thoughts to rest.
This only hope relieves me, that the strife 460
With me hath end. All the contèst is now
’Twixt God and Dagon. Dagon hath presumed,
Me overthrown, to enter lists 2 with God,
His deity comparing and preferring
Before the God of Abraham. He, be sure, 465
Will not connive 3 or linger, thus provoked,
But will arise, and his great name assert.
8. Glorified. “Who slew’st them many a slain”: i.e., who slew many a one of them.
9. Mistrust.
1. Inclined.
2. Jousting courts, as in medieval tourneys.
3. Hesitate, palter.