The Warning
The Warning - meaning Summary
Oppression Risks National Ruin
Longfellow warns that brutal oppression can provoke catastrophic retaliation. He reworks the biblical Samson as the "poor, blind Slave," arguing that enslaved people, shorn of strength and dignity, might in desperate fury demolish the pillars supporting the republic. The poem presents slavery not only as moral wrong but as a political danger whose consequences could reduce national liberties to wreckage, urging heed to justice before ruin follows.
Read Complete AnalysesBeware! 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.
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