Alroy: The Prince of the Captivity

SHE comes not yet! her cheerful form, not yet it sparkles in our mournful sky. She comes not yet! the shadowy stars seem sad and lustreless without their Queen. She comes not yet!’

YOUR face is troubled, uncle.’ ‘So is my mind.’ ‘All may go well.’ ‘Miriam, we have seen the best. Prepare yourself for sorrow, gentle girl. I care not for myself, for I am old,...

THE waving of banners, the flourish of trumpets, the neighing of steeds, and the glitter of spears! On the distant horizon they gleam like the morning, when the gloom of the nig...

NOW our dreary way is over, now the desert’s toil is past. Soon the river broadly flowing, through its green and palmy banks, to our wearied limbs shall offer baths ‘which calip...

‘TWAS midnight, and the storm still raged; ‘mid the roar of the thunder and the shrieks of the wind, the floods of forky lightning each instant revealed the broad and billowy br...

THE cornets sounded a final flourish as the Prince of the Captivity dismounted from his white mule; his train shouted as if they were once more a people; and, had it not been fo...

A SCORCHING sun, a blue and burning sky, on every side lofty ranges of black and barren mountains, dark ravines, deep caverns, unfathomable gorges! A solitary being moved in the...

TRADITION taught that the sceptre of Solomon could be found only in the unknown sepulchres of the ancient Hebrew monarchs, and that none might dare to touch it but one of their...

SPEED, fleetly speed, thou courser bold, and track the desert’s trackless way. Beneath thee is the boundless earth, above thee is the boundless heaven, an iron soil and brazen s...

‘The only hope of Israel,’ murmured the Cabalist,’ my pupil and my prince! I have long perceived in his young mind the seed of mighty deeds, and o’er his future life have often...