Paradise Lost: The Arguments - WW Norton & Company

34 John Milton
Though dearly to my cost, thy gins, and toils. 8
Thy fair enchanted cup, and warbling charms,
No more on me have power; their force is nulled; 935
So much of adder’s wisdom I have learnt,
To fence my ear against thy sorceries. 9
If in my flower of youth and strength, when all men
Loved, honored, feared me, thou alone could hate me,
Thy husband, slight me, sell me, and forgo me, 940
How would’st thou use me now, blind, and thereby
Deceivable, in most things as a child,
Helpless, thence easily contemned and scorned,
And last neglected! How would’st thou insult,
When I must live uxorious to thy will 945
In perfect thraldom! how again betray me,
Bearing my words and doings to the lords
To gloss upon, and, censuring, frown or smile! 1
This jail I count the house of liberty
To thine, 2 whose doors my feet shall never enter. 950
dalila. Let me approach at least, and touch thy hand.
samson. Not for thy life, lest fierce remembrance wake
My sudden rage to tear thee joint by joint. 3
At distance I forgive thee, go with that;
Bewail thy falsehood, and the pious works 955
It hath brought forth to make thee memorable
Among illustrious women, faithful wives;
Cherish thy hastened widowhood with the gold
Of matrimonial treason: so farewell.
dalila. I see thou art implacable, more deaf 960
To prayers than winds and seas. Yet winds to seas
Are reconciled at length, and sea to shore:
Thy anger, unappeasable, still rages,
8. Nets. “Trains”: tricks. “Gins”: snares. The traditional images for female wiles are heightened by reference
to an enchanting cup and warbled charms reminiscent of Homer’s Circe (Odyssey 10).
9. Psalms 58.4–5 describes the “deaf adder that stoppeth her ear; which will not hearken to the voice of
charmers, charming never so wisely.”
1. Milton’s libertarian hatred of censorship and managed liberty is apparent. “Gloss”: comment.
2. Compared to thine.
3. What Samson might remember, at the touch of Dalila, which would lead him to tear her to pieces, is a
problem in domestic psychology.