Paradise Lost: The Arguments - WW Norton & Company

38 John Milton
By female usurpation, nor dismayed. 1060
But had we best retire? I see a storm.
samson. Fair days have oft contracted 8 wind and rain.
chorus. But this another kind of tempest brings.
samson. Be less abstruse; my riddling days are past.
chorus. Look now for no enchanting voice, nor fear 1065
The bait of honeyed words; a rougher tongue
Draws hitherward, I know him by his stride,
The giant Harapha 9 of Gath, his look
Haughty, as is his pile 1 high-built and proud.
Comes he in peace? What wind hath blown him hither 1070
I less conjecture than when first I saw
The sumptuous Dalila floating this way: 2
His habit carries peace, his brow defiance.
samson. Or peace or not, alike to me he comes.
chorus. His fraught 3 we soon shall know: he now arrives. 1075
harapha. I come not, Samson, to condole thy chance,
As these 4 perhaps, yet wish it had not been,
Though for no friendly intent. I am of Gath;
Men call me Harapha, of stock renowned
As Og, or Anak, and the Emims old 1080
That Kiriathaim held. 5 Thou know’st me now,
If thou at all art known. 6 Much I have heard
Of thy prodigious might and feats performed,
Incredible to me, in this displeased,
That I was never present on the place 1085
Of those encounters, where we might have tried
8. Drawn after them.
9. Harapha does not appear at all within the story told in the Book of Judges; Milton invented him with the
help of some hints from the image of Goliath in 1 Samuel 17 and some other giants in 2 Samuel 21. Rapha
means “giant” in Hebrew.
1. Body; with the suggestion that he is tall as a tower.
2. That the various visitors of Samson are blown hither and yon by the winds of occasion serves to emphasize
the deep steadiness of Samson’s final resolution. “Habit” (next line): garb. (He’s not dressed for fighting.)
3. Freight, i.e., business.
4. The chorus of Danites.
5. Og was a giant king of Bashan in Deuteronomy 3.11; Anak and his sons were giants in Numbers 13.33;
the Emims were giants in Deuteronomy 2.10–11 and Genesis 14.5.
6. I.e., you know me now if you know anything; but also, “if you are anyone worth knowing.” Cf. Satan’s brag
to Zephon and Ithuriel: “Not to know me argues yourselves unknown” (Paradise Lost 4.830).