While Saul to Sergius so discoursing spoke, Over their right the sun, long since uprisen, Climbed the steep slope of morning in the sky. And now the summit of a ridge those twain Reach, whence, straightforward looking, they behold, In light so bright, through air so fair, a scene Of the most choice the eye can rest upon. A wide and long champaign of fruitful green, On either side hemmed in with skirting hill, Stretches before them to the bounding sky, Where Hermon, scarce descried through distance dim, Silvers with frost each morn his crown of snows. Descended, they therein, through billowing wheat Wind-swayed, might, to a watcher from the hill, Seem laboring like two swimmers in the surf, And hardly, in the fluctuation, way Making whither they went; yet swiftly borne Were they, and easily, onward. Soon Saul said-- And therewith pointed to two mountain peaks, Seen towering on the left to lordly height, Twin warders of a lesser vale between, In stature twin and twin in symmetry-- "Ebal and Gerizim yon mountains are, And these between the vale of Shechem lies, Theatre once of oath and sacrament Enacted by my nation with dread rite. 'A strangely serious race', thou yesterday Calledst us Hebrews, strangely frivolous race Surely were we, if somewhat serious not, For we are heirs of serious history. Yon natural amphitheatre thou seest, Circled and sloped against those mountain sides With spacious interval of plain enclosed; There was the oath of our obedience sworn. On Ebal half our tribes, and half our tribes On Gerizim, stood opposite, and midst, The tribe of Levi, God's peculiar tribe, Stood in the vale about the ark of God, Whence Joshua, our great captain, read the law-- He and the Levites, ocean-like the sound-- With blessing or with curse by God adjoined As disobedient or obedient we. This was when scarce our fathers had set foot Hitherside Jordan in the promised land; They from their stronghold camp came here express To swear such solemn covenant with God. Six hundred thousand souls of fighting-men, With women and with children fourfold more, Ranged on the one side or the other, joined To them that mustered in the middle vale, All heard the threatening or the gracious words, And all, in multitudinous answer, said 'Amen!'--the tribes on Ebal to the curse, And to the blessing, those on Gerizim, Replying--choral imprecation dire Upon themselves of every human ill, If disobedient found, of promised good Acceptance at the price, acknowledged just, Of whole obedience to God's holy law. It was as if Jehovah had adjured All things, above, below, His witnesses, 'Hear, O ye heavens, and thou, O earth, give ear, While thus My people covenant swear with Me.'