YET AGAIN SHALT THOU PLANT
VINEYARDS ON THE MOUNTAINS OF SAMARIA._'
'See! their white forms break through the sparkling foliage of the sunny
shrubs as they descend, with measured step, that mild declivity. A
fair society in bright procession: each one clothed in solemn drapery,
veiling her shadowy face with modest hand, and bearing on her graceful
head a graceful vase. Their leader is my sister.
'And now they reach the fountain's side, and dip their vases in the
water, pure and beauteous as themselves. Some repose beneath the marble
pillars; some, seated 'mid the flowers, gather sweets, and twine them
into garlands; and that wild girl, now that the order is broken, touches
with light fingers her moist vase, and showers startling drops of
glittering light on her serener sisters. Hark! again they sing.'
'_O VINE OF SIBMAH! UPON THY SUMMER FRUITS, AND UPON THY VINTAGE, A
SPOILER HATH FALLEN!_'
A scream, a shriek, a long wild shriek, confusion, flight, despair!
Behold! from out the woods a tur-baned man rushes, and seizes the leader
of the chorus. Her companions fly on all sides, Miriam alone is left in
the arms of Alschiroch.
The water column wildly rising from the breast of summer ocean, in some
warm tropic clime, when the sudden clouds too well discover that the
holiday of heaven is over, and the shrieking sea-birds tell a time of
fierce commotion, the column rising from the sea, it was not so wild as
he, the young Alroy.
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