Samson and the Slaves

     This poem was on the harder side for me for a few reasons. The allusions weren't as subtle as the allusions before, but what he was alluding to was hard to understand. When I first read the poem I thought Wadsworth was alluding to the story of Samson in the Bible, and how he was a slave to himself in a way. But upon further inspection I found that the real allusion was in the last half of the poem. In this part he started using Samson as a metaphor for slavery. In the first line of the last stanza the poem says "There is a poor, blind Samson in this land", and if you replace Samson with slavery it reveals the true meaning.  Everyone and the government is blind to the problem of slavery which will create a land where "thousands will perish" and "shake the pillars of this Commonweal".