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splendors of earth and heaven, and the voice of the true poet preacher will appear, as it rises and swells with the theme, worthy of concerting with the eldest harmonies of nature. Those modes, on the other hand, of presenting religious truth, which, amid beautiful scenery and seasons of special spiritual interest, seem harsh, hard, unsuitable, which jar upon the musical sweetness and incense breathing all around, and of which the echo sounds from above like a scream of laughter, contradiction, and scorn, are therein proved to be imperfect if not false. They are not in unison with the spirit of the surrounding universe, but are rejected and flung back by it as foul or rabid falsehoods.

The Hebrew prophets lived in the eye of nature. We always figure them with cheeks embrowned by the noons of the East. The sun had looked on them, but it was lovinglythe moon had "smitten" them, but it was with poetry, not madness-they had drunk in fire, the fire of Eastern day, from a hundred sources-from the lukewarm brooks of their land, from the rich colors of their vegetation, from their mornings of unclouded brightness, from their afternoons of thunder, from the large stars of their evenings and nights. The heat of their climate was strong enough to enkindle but not to enervate their frames, inured as they were to toil, fatigue, fasting, and frequent travel. They dwelt in a land of hills and valleys, of brooks and streams, of spots of exuberant vegetation, of iron-ribbed rocks and mountains—a land, on one side, dipping down in the Mediterranean Sea, on another, floating up into Lebanon, and on the others, edged by deserts, teeming at once with dreadful scenery and secretsthrough which had passed of old time the march of the Almighty, and where his anger had left for its memorials, here, the sandy sepulchre of those thousands whose carcasses fell in the wilderness, and there, a whole Dead Sea of vengeance, lowering amid a desolation fit to be the very gateway of hellstanding between their song and subject-matter, and such a fiery clime, and such stern scenery-the Hebrew bards were enabled to indite a LANGUAGE more deeply dyed in the colors of the sun, more intensely metaphorical, more faithfully transcriptive of nature, a simpler, and yet larger utterance, than ever before or since rushed out from the heart and tongue of man.

And not merely were there thus certain general features

connected with the leading events in Old Testament history, with the peculiar doctrines of the Jews, and with the climate and scenery of their country, which secured the existence of poetry, but the very construction and characteristics of the Hebrew tongue were favorable to its birth. Destitute of the richness and infinite flexibility of the Greek, the artificial stateliness and strength of the Latin, and the varied resources and borrowed beauties of modern languages, Adam's tongue-the language of the early giants of the species-was fitted, beyond them all, for the purposes of lofty poetry. It was, in the first place, as Herder well calls it, an abyss of verbs; and there is no part of speech so well adapted as the verb to express motion, energetic action, quick transition, and strong endurance. This language was no quiet or sullen sea, but all alive, speaking, surging, now bursting in breaker, and now heaving in long deep swell. Its adjectives were borrowed from verbs, served their purposes, and did their work; and though barren in abstract terms, it was none the less adapted for the purposes of poetry; for it abounded in sensuous terms-it swarmed with words descriptive of the objects of nature. It contains, amid its apparent inopia verborum, more than two hundred and fifty botanical terms; and, then, its utterance, more than that of any other tongue, was a voice from the heart. We sometimes hear orators who appear to speak with the lungs, instead of the lips; but the Hebrews heaved up their rage and their joy, their grief and their terror, from the depths of their hearts. By their frequent use, too, of the present tense, they have unconsciously contributed to the picturesque and powerful effect of their writings. This has quickened their every page, and made their words, if we may so speak, to stand on end.

It may, indeed, be objected to Hebrew poetry, that it has no regular rhythm, except a rude parallelism. What then? Must it be, therefore, altogether destitute of music? Has not the rain a rhythm of its own, as it patters on the pane, or sinks on the bosom of its kindred pool? Hath not the wind a harmony, as it bows the groaning woods, or howls over the mansions of the dead? Have not the waves of ocean their wild bass? Has not the thunder its own "deep and dreadful organ-pipe?" Do they speak in rhyme? Do they murmur in blank verse? Who taught them to begin in Iambics, or to close in Alexandrines? And shall not God's own

speech have a peculiar note, no more barbarous than is the voice of the old woods or the older cataracts?

Besides, to call parallelism a coarse or uncouth rhythm, betrays an ignorance of its nature. Without entering at large on the subject of Hebrew versification, we may ask any one, who has paid even a slight attention to the subject, if the effect, whether of the gradational parallel, in which the second or responsive clause rises above the first, like the round of a ladder, as in the 1st Psalm

"Blessed is the man

That hath not walked in the counsel of the ungodly,
Nor stood in the way of sinners:

And hath not sat in the seat of the scornful;"

or the antithetical parallel, in which two lines correspond with each other, by an opposition of terms and sentiments, as in the words

"The memory of the just is blessed,

But the name of the wicked shall rot;"

or the constructive parallel, in which word does not answer to word, nor sentence, as equivalent or opposite, but there is a correspondence and equality between the different propositions, in the turn and shape of the whole sentence, and of the constructive parts-noun answering to noun, verb to verb, negative to negative, interrogation to interrogation, as in the 19th Psalm

"The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul;

The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple; or, finally, the introverted parallel, in which, whatever be the number of lines, the first runs parallel with the last, the second with the penultimate, and so throughout, such as

My son, if thine heart be wise,

My heart shall rejoice, even mine;
Yea, my reins shall rejoice

When thy lips speak right things—"

We ask, if the effect of all these, perpetually intermingled as they are, be not to enliven the composition, often to give distinctness and precision to the train of thought, to impress the sentiments upon the memory, and to give out a harmony, which, if inferior to rhyme in the compression produced by the difficulty (surmounted) of uniting varied sense

with recurring sound, and in the pleasure of surprise; and to blank verse, in freedom, in the effects produced by the variety of pause, and in the force of long and linked passages, as well as of insulated lines, is less slavish than the one, and less arbitrary than the other? Unlike rhyme, its point is more that of thought than of language; unlike blank verse, it never can, however managed, degenerate into heavy prose. Such is parallelism, which generally forms the differential quality of the poetry of Scripture, although there are many passages in it destitute of this aid, and which yet, in the spirit they breathe, and the metaphors by which they are garnished, are genuine and high poetry. And there can be little question, that in the parallelism of the Hebrew tongue we can trace many of the peculiarities of modern writing, and in it find the fountain of the rhythm, the pomp, and antithesis, which lend often such grace, and always such energy, to the style of Johnson, of Junius, of Burke, of Hall, of Chalmers-indeed, of most writers who rise to the grand swells of prose-poetry.

Ere closing this chapter, we may mention one other curious use of parallelism by the Jewish poets. As it is, confessedly, the key to the tower of Hebrew

verse, and as, in one species of it, between every two distichs, and every two parts of a sentence, there is an alternation, like the backward and forward movements of a dance, so the sacred writers keep up a similar interchange between the vast concave above and the world below. Mark this in the history of the creation. At first, there is darkness above and darkness below. Then, as the earth is enlightened, the sky is illumined too; the earth is brought forth from the grave of chaos; the heaven is uplifted in its "terrible crystal;" and, ere the earth is inhabited, the air is peopled. Again, as to their present state, the heaven is God's throne, the earth his footstool-grandeur sits on the one, insignificance cowers on the other; power resides above in the meteors, the storms, the stars, the lightnings, the sunbeams-passive weakness shrinks and trembles below. The one is a place, nay, a womb of glory, from which angels glide, and Deity himself at times descends. The other is a tomb, an Aceldama, a Golgotha; and yet, though the one, in comparison with the other, be so grovelling and mean, taken in connection with the other, it catches and reflects a certain degree of glory. It has no

light in itself, but the sun condescends to shine upon it, to gild its streams and to touch its mountains, as with the finger of God. It is a footstool, but it is God's footstool. It is a tomb, but a tomb set in the blue of heaven. It has no power in itself, but it witnesses and feels the energies of the upper universe. It is not the habitation of demons, or angels, or God; but angels rest their feet upon its hills, demons walk to and fro through its wastes, and God has been heard sometimes in its groves or gardens, in the cool wind of the day. Hence, while righteousness looks down from heaven, truth springs from earth. Hence, the prophet, after saying, "Give ear, O ye heavens! and I will speak," adds, "and hear, O earth! the words of my mouth." So much for this mighty prophetical dance or parallelism between earth and heaven.*

CHAPTER II.

GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF HEBREW POETRY.

AT the hazard of retreading here and there our own steps in the Introduction, we must speak separately of the general characteristics of Hebrew poets. To the first we intend to name of these, we have referred already--it is their figurative language. Like the swan on still St. Mary's Lake, each thought "floats double,"--each birth is of twins. It is so with all high thoughts, except, perhaps, those of geometrical abstraction. The proof of great thoughts is, will they translate into figured and sensuous expression? will nature recognize, own, and clothe them, as if they were her own? or must they stand, small, shivering, and naked, before her unopened door? But here we must make a distinction. Many thoughts find, after beating about for, natural analogies--they strain a tribute. The thought of genius precedes its word, only as the flash of the lightning the roar of the near thunder; nay, they often seem identical. Now, the images of Scripture are

*See, on this subject, Herder's "Spirit of Hebrew Poetry."

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