Verse 15
15. It is hard to find in all poetry a more beautiful rhetorical foil than this verse. The knocking at the gate in “Macbeth” is like it. When a passion has run so intensely that its crisis must be near, then to interrupt it, and divert the attention by throwing in fresh and unlooked-for elements, is the highest art. This interruption exactly suits the stern and careful brothers already mentioned. Partly to prevent the intimacy, imprudent and excessive as they seem to regard it, of the lovers, and partly to protect their property in this season of its exposure when they themselves are so busy, they order their sister to spend the day in watching the vineyards.
Take us the foxes Foxes were abundant in Palestine, (the jackal is not here meant,) and they did the vines damage at this season, chiefly by burrowing around their roots, like the gopher and field rat. Unless now caught, they would make havoc in harvest. To this order she meekly yields, consoling herself with the sentiment of the following verse.
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