...finds some place for its description in his work. Here are the impressions of John Milton (1671): "O dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon, Irrecoverably dark, total eclipse Without all hopes of day! O first created Beam, and thou great Word, Let there be light and light over all; Why am I thus bereav'd...

...exposed To daily fraud, contempt, abuse, and wrong, Within doors, or without, still as a fool, In power of others, never in my own; Scarce half I seem to...noon, 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";...

...Indeed, your first view of me, white bearded and ancient, may have turned that gloom into profound dark; dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon, irrecoverably dark, total eclipse. But the case is not as hard as that Critics have dug into my books until they could come up with something...

...sylleptic references to the intertext, looked at in chapter 2, show his deficiencies and ignorance: 'O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon, / Irrecoverably dark, total eclipse' (80-1). In this, the most allusive passage in the play, Samson cries out his profound loss of hope...

...exposed To daily fraud, contempt, abuse, and wrong, Within doors, or without, still as a fool, In power of others, never in my own; Scarce half I seem to...noon, Irrecoverably dark, total eclipse, Without all hope of day. . . . The Sun to me is dark and silent as the moon. Sampson recognizes what he has done...

...blind hero, wrote powerfully in "Samson Agonistes" of the soul's light in a context of solar eclipse: O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon. Irrecoverably dark, total eclipse, Without all hope of day! . . . The sun to me is dark And silent is the moon, When she deserts the night Hid in...

...exposed To daily fraud, contempt, abuse and wrong, Within doors, or without, still as a fool,0 In power of others, never in my own; Scarce half I seem to...half. O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon, So Irrecoverably dark, total eclipse Without all hope of day! 0 first-created beam, and thou great...

...darkness, not only physically blind but also incarcerated, doubly barred from the light of the sun: "O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon,/ Irrecoverably dark, total Eclipse/ Without all hope of day!" (SA, 80-82) - the opposite to the Restored monarchy's self-image of a sun-bringing, sun-dwelling...

...about God's timing. Samson cannot believe his light could ever come out again. There is only darkness, "O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon, / Irrecoverably dark, total eclipse / Without all hope of day!" (80-82). But the comparison of blindness to a natural eclipse might imply that the darkness...

...with sorrow. Ah, how well I understand his deprivation—the perpetual night in which he dwelt— 0 dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon, Irrecoverably dark, total eclipse Without all hope of day! In imagination I can hear Homer singing, as with unsteady, hesitating steps he gropes...