Explore "The Warning" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Beware! The Israelite of old, who tore / The lion in his path, -- when, poor and blind, / He saw the blessed light of heaven no more, / Shorn of his noble strength and forced to grind / In prison, and at last led forth to be / A pander to Philistine revelry, --
Upon the pillars of the temple laid / His desperate hands, and in its overthrow / Destroyed himself, and with him those who made / A cruel mockery of his sightless woe; / The poor, blind Slave, the scoff and jest of all, / Expired, and thousands perished in the fall!
There is a poor, blind Samson in this land, / Shorn of his strength and bound in bonds of steel, / Who may, in some grim revel, raise his hand, / And shake the pillars of this Commonweal, / Till the vast Temple of our liberties. / A shapeless mass of wreck and rubbish lies.