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!"
In the next scene an officer comes to demand Samson's presence at the feast of Dagon that he may entertain the Philistine lords with feats of strength. He at first dismisses the messenger with a contemptuous refusal: but, with a premonition of the end which recalls Oedipus at Colonus, he suddenly changes his mind—
"I begin to feel
Some rousing motions in me, which dispose
To something extraordinary my thoughts.
If there be aught of presage in the mind,
This day will be remarkable in my life
By some great act, or of my days the last."
{238}
"Go, and the Holy One
Of Israel be thy guide,"
sing the Chorus: and he leaves the scene, like Oedipus, to return no more, but to be more felt in his absence than in his presence. Manoah re-enters to utter his further hopes of ransom, in which there is a note of Sophoclean irony recalling the ignorant optimism of Oedipus in the Tyrannus; and as he and the Chorus talk they hear at first a loud shouting, apparently of triumph, and then another louder and more terrible—
Manoah.
"O what noise!
Mercy of Heaven! what hideous noise was that?
Horribly loud, unlike the former shout."
Chorus.