So from the tents and ships, a lengthened train
Spreads all the beach, and wide o'ershades the plain:
Along the region runs a deafening sound;
Beneath their footsteps groans the trembling ground.
Towards the end of the Book of Ecclesiastes (xii. 5) a comparison is made between an old man who gradually loses his white locks and an almond-tree that sheds its white blossoms. Anacreon has in one of his Odes (the eleventh) a few exceedingly pretty lines, which recall the foregoing figure. They run as follows:—
Oft I am by women told,
Poor Anacreon! thou grow'st old;
Look how thy hairs are falling all:
Poor Anacreon! how they fall!
The Biblical story found in the fourth Book of Moses (xiv. 2–11) seems to have been known and partly reproduced by Virgil in the first book of the Aeneid, 148. There the following lines occur, which offer a most striking parallel:—