y ship
Of Tarsus, bound for the isles
Of Javan or Gadire,
With all her bravery on, and tackle trim,
Sails fill'd and streamers waving,
Courted by all the winds that hold them play;
An amber scent of odorous perfume--
Her harbinger, a damsel train behind?
Some rich Philistian matron she may seem;
And now, at nearer view, no other certain
Than Dalila, thy wife.

It cannot be without significance that the author of the story in the
Book of Judges speaks in a different way of each of the three women who
play a part in the tragedy of Samson's life. The woman who lived among
the vineyards of Timnath, whose murder Samson avenged, was his wife.
She was a Philistine, but Samson married her according to the
conventional manner of the time and, also according to the manner of
the time, she kept her home with her parents after her marriage.
Wherefore she has gotten her name in the good books of the sociological
philosophers who uphold the matronymic theory touching early society.
The woman of Gaza whom Samson visited what time he confounded his
would-be captors by carrying off the doors of the gates of the city was
curtly "an harlot." Of the third woman it is said only that it came to
pass that Samson "loved a woman in the Valley of Sorek, whose name was
Delilah." Thereupon follows the story of her bribery by the lords of
the Philistines and her betrayal of her lover. Evidently a licentious
woman who could not aspire even to the merit of the heroine of Dekker's
play.

Milton not only accepted the theory of her wifehood, but also
attributed patriotic motives to her. She knew that her name would be
defamed "in Dan, in Judah and the bordering tribes."

But in my country, where I most desire,
In Eeron, Gaza, Asdod and in Gath,
I shall be nam'd among the famousest
Of women, sung at solemn festivals,
Living and dead recorded, who to save
Her country from a fierce destroyer, chose
Above the faith of wedlock bands; my tomb
With odours visited and annual flowers;
Not less renown'd than in Mount Ephraim
Jael, who, with inhospitable guile,
Smote Sisera sleeping.

In the scene before us Dalila is wholly and simply a siren, a
seductress who plays upon the known love of Samson from motives which
are not disclosed. As yet one may imagine her moved by a genuine
passion. She turns her lustrous black eyes upon him as she hails him a
double victor ove