Part 22 (1/2)

Break forth into joy, sing together, Ye waste places of Jerusalem: For the LORD hath comforted his people, He hath redeemed Jerusalem.

The LORD hath made bare his holy arm In the eyes of all the nations; And all the ends of the earth Shall see the salvation of our G.o.d.

Depart ye, depart ye, go ye out from thence, Touch no unclean thing; Go ye out of the midst of her; Be ye clean, ye that bear the vessels of the LORD.

For ye shall not go out in haste, Neither shall ye go by flight; For the LORD will go before you, And the G.o.d of Israel will be your rearward.

NOTES

The Metrical System of Biblical Verse

In the strictest sense the term 'metrical' is not applicable to Biblical verse, since this is const.i.tuted, not by any numbering of syllables, but by the parallelism of whole clauses.

The LORD of Hosts is with us, The G.o.d of Jacob is our refuge.

This is verse, not in virtue of any particular number of syllables in the lines, but because the second line is felt to run parallel with the first. This principle of parallelism of clauses underlies the whole of versification in Scriptural literature. As however the different modes of combination and variation of these parallel lines in Biblical poetry correspond, to a large extent, with those of metrical lines in other languages, it is convenient to speak of the principles governing them as a 'metrical system.'

One consequence however of the difference between Biblical and other verse should always be borne in mind. The parallelism of clauses, which makes the foundation of Hebrew verse, is also a thing proper to oratorical prose in all languages. Accordingly in Hebrew prose and verse overlap: the extremes of either (e.g. Psalms and Chronicles) are strongly contrasted, but there is a middle style which can be presented in either form. Hence there is nothing strange in the fact that the same pa.s.sage of Scripture may be presented by one editor as prose and by another as verse, according to the purpose of each arrangement. [For example: the Oration on Immortality (page 75), which for a specimen of oratory is here arranged as prose, is printed as verse in the Revised Version of the Apocrypha.]

1. The simplest type of parallelism in Biblical literature may be called 'Antique Rhythm.' It is the metre of most of the traditional poetry preserved in the historic books of Scripture. Its unit consists in a couplet, of which either member may be strengthened by a parallel line, but not both.

Let me die the death of the righteous.

And let my last end be like his!

He saith, which heareth the words of G.o.d, Which seeth the vision of the Almighty, Falling down, and having his eyes open.

He shall eat up the nations his adversaries, And shall break their bones in pieces, And smite them through with his arrows.

Such a unit may be called a 'strain.' It will be seen in the examples that the first strain is a simple couplet, the second has its first line strengthened, the last has its second line strengthened. This power of occasionally strengthening either line of a couplet by an additional line gives the Antique Rhythm a flexibility suited to spontaneous composition. A similar device is found in connection with the traditional ballad poetry of England, of which such collections as The Percy Reliques are accidentally preserved specimens. While the regular metre of such ballads is a four-line stanza, yet a few poems, such as the Ballad of Sir Cauline, show some stanzas with individual lines strengthened:

Fair Christabel, that lady mild, Was had forth of her tower; But ever she droopeth in her mind, As nipt by an ungentle wind Doth some pale lily flower.

The poetry of the historic books mostly takes the form of aggregations of such 'strains' of Antique Rhythm, with no further structure.

Occasionally such a poem will fall into verse paragraphs or 'strophes'

[to be distinguished from the antistrophic system presently to be described]: an example is David's Song of Victory (see note on page 266). [For a combination of Antique Rhythm and the Antistrophic system, see note to vii on page 267.]

2. The metre of Wisdom verse is highly elaborate: we find here, not only the parallelism of successive clauses, but the 'high parallelism' which correlates all parts of a whole poem with one another. Two types may be distinguished: the Stanza structure and the Antistrophic structure.

Stanzas are familiar to the English reader: in Biblical poetry groups of three lines, or four lines, etc., recur in succession: a simple example is the Chorus of Watchmen (on page 236).

The Antistrophic system is familiar to students of Greek, as the metrical form of tragic choral odes. In this case the stanzas run in pairs, strophe and antistrophe, the theory being that the antistrophe exactly repeats the metrical form of its strophe; if another strophe follows the form may altogether change, but the changed form will be repeated in the corresponding antistrophe. [This may be expressed by the formula a a', b b', c c', etc.] Besides the pair of strophes there may be an introduction, or conclusion, or both. No. i of the Sonnets (on page 125) is an example of a poem consisting simply of strophe and antistrophe; No. iii (page 126) has also a conclusion.[7]

[Footnote 7: The term strophe is the Greek for 'turning': the system is derived from the dance performance of Greek odes, according to which the chorus danced from the altar to the end of the orchestra in one stanza, then 'turned,' and _retraced their steps_ for the antistrophe or 'answering' stanza. The term strophe has come to be used also for verse paragraphs where there is no antistrophic arrangement. (See page 266, note on vi.)]

Both in the case of the Stanza structure and the Antistrophic structure there are various modifications and elaborations--duplication, inversion, interruption, etc.: these it will be sufficient to explain in connection with the examples in which they are found.

3. The metre of Lyrics is in the main the same as that of Wisdom poetry.

But in the strictest kinds of lyrics the structure is further determined by the musical performance. A lyric may be a solo, or the matter may be arranged for 'antiphonal' performance between different performers, e.g.