Samson Agonistes and Shorter Poems (Crofts Classics): 5

Milton ranks alongside Shakespeare among English poets; his writings and his influence are an important part of the history of English literature, culture, and thought. He is best known for Paradise Lost, which is generally regarded, as he intended, as the greatest epic poem in the English language.For many readers of Milton, however, the drama of Samson Agonistes is the most powerful and completely satisfying of Milton's major works. The poem deals with the final phase of Samson's life and recounts the story told in the Bible book of Judges. The action, up to the reported catastrophe, is wholly psychological; it is the process by which Samson, "Eyeless in Gaza, at the mill with slaves," moves from preoccupation with his misery and disgrace to selfless humility and renewed spiritual strength, so that he can once more feel himself God's chosen champion. He is granted a return of his old strength and pulls down the pillars that support the temple of the Philistine god Dagon, crushing himself along with his captors: "Their own destruction come speedily upon them". The drama must owe a great deal of its power to Milton's sense of kinship with his blind hero; "chief of all, O loss of sight, of thee I most complain!", but there is nothing in the drama that does not belong to the story of Samson.Altogether, if Samson was his last epic poem, it was a grand testament. Like Samson, Milton, totally blind since the age of 44, was able to conquer despair or to sublimate it in his last three great poems. These expressed not his earlier revolutionary faith in men and movements but a purified faith in God and the regenerative strength of the individual soul.

A budget edition, but well annotated. Samson Agonistes is well worth reading, and is very much a narrative- based poem. It tells the biblical story of Samson and Dalila as found in Judges, with some interesting takes and commentary on Samson's role in the biblical story and his theological status. An interesting poem to read when looking at Milton's theological stance. The volume also contains a good variety of poems and the masque, Comus. Good for a Milton novice.