"All otherwise to me my thoughts portend, That these dark orbs no more shall treat with light, Nor the other light of life continue long, But yield to double darkness nigh at hand: So much I feel my genial spirits droop, My hopes all flat; Nature within me seems In all her functions weary of herself; My race of glory run, and race of shame, And I shall shortly be with them that rest." So Manoah leaves him, and in a noble lyric he laments over his greatest sufferings, which are not those of the body but those of the mind-- "which no cooling herb Or med'cinal liquor can assuage, Nor breath of vernal air from snowy Alp." A choral song on the mysterious dealings of God closes this episode which is followed by the most dramatically effective in the poem, that of the visit of Dalila. The moment the blind man is told that it is "Dalila, thy wife," he cries-- "My wife! my traitress! let her not come near me:" and his reply to her offer of penitence, affection and help, begins with the daringly expressive line-- "Out, out, hyaena! these are thy wonted arts." A long and telling debate follows, in which {236} Dalila makes very good points, one of them recalling the scene in which Eve reproaches Adam for indulging her instead of exercising his right to command and control the weakness of her sex. To this argument Dalila receives the stern, characteristically Miltonic reply-- "All wickedness is weakness: that plea, therefore With God or man will gain thee no remission," He refuses her intercession with the Philistine lords, forbids her even to touch his hand; "Not for thy life, lest fierce remembrance wake My sudden rage to tear thee joint by joint," and drives her to remind him defiantly that, whatever he and his Hebrews may say of her, she appeals to another tribunal of fame-- "In Ecron, Gaza, Asdod, and in Gath, I shall be named among the famousest Of women, sung at solemn festivals, Living and dead recorded." So she goes out, and the Chorus make Miltonic meditations on the unhappiness of marriage and the divinely appointed subjection of women. The next visitor is Harapha, the Philistine giant, who comes to taunt Samson, and is defied by him to mortal combat. This {237} episode is perhaps the least interesting, but it advances the action by exhibiting Samson's returning sense that God is still with him and will yet do some great work through him. It fitly leads to the chorus-- "O, how comely it is, and how reviving To the spirits of just men long oppressed, When God into the hands of their deliverer Puts invincible might, To quell the mighty of the earth, the oppressor, The brute and boisterous force of violent men, Hardy and industrious to support Tyrannic power, but raging to pursue The righteous and all such as honour truth!"