J. A. Selbie.
POET.— Only Ac 17^ ' As certain even of your own poets have said. For we are also his otispring.' By ' your own poets ' (ol Kad' i/xai [WH marg. nudi after B, 33 etc, Copt.] TroiTjTcii) Lightfoot thinks St. Paul meant poets belonging to the same school as his Stoic audience {Dissertntions on Apost. Age, p. 288 f.). The words have been tr.aced to Cleanthes' Htjmn to Zeus, 5, where we read, ' For Thine oll'spring are we (Ik croO yap yinoi ^jfi^v), therefore will I hynm Thy pr.aises and sing Thy might forever. Thee all this universe which rolls about the earth obeys, wheresoever Tliou dost guide it, and gladly owns Thy sway.' Than in this ' sublime hymn,' says Lightfoot [Dissert, p. 3UG), ' heathen devotion seldom or never soars biglier.' Cleanthes belongs to the 4th cent. B.C. The exact words of St. Paul's quotation {toO 7d(: Kal yifoi iaixiv) have been found in another Stoic's writings, the Phcennmena of Aratus of Soli (of the 3rd cent. B.C.), and the form of the ajiostle's expression, 'some of j^our own poets,' may mean that he knew the words to be found in more than one poet.
In 1 Co 15'' and Tit 1" quotations have been discovered from other Greek poets, but they par- take rather more of the character of common proverbs than the quotation from Cleanthes or Aratus. The first ((pdelpovaif i^Br) XPV"^' oM'-^'a' KaKai) liiis been traced to the Thais of Menander, a comic poet of the 3rd cent. B.C. The line is iambic trimeter, and the form xp'^"^' of the TR is necessary for the scansion ; xP'Q"''^ '^ however, the form in almost all MSS, and adopted by almost all editors, so that the feeling for the metre of the line was not present when the apostle wrote. The second (Kp^res dfi xpevarixt., KaKo. 6r)pla, yaaripe^ dpyal) is a complete hexameter verse, .and comes from the Hepl xpvi^'^" of Epimenides, who lived about R.c. 6()i). It is also found in the Hymn to Zens of Callinuichus.
These fragments of Greek verse exhaust the poetry (if the word is to be used in its usual con- notation) of the NT. It is extremely probable, however, that many of our Lord's sayings were cast in the forms of Hebrew poetry. See the articles by Briggs on ' The Wisdom of Jesus the Messiah' in the Expos. Times, vol. viii. (1897) pp. 3!)3ir., 452 in, 49211"., vol. ix. (1898)69 If., and less fully in his Study of Holy Scripture (1899), p. 373 tl. J. Hastings.
POETRY (HEBREW).—
Introdiirdon. t The Form of Heb. poetry.
A. Poems written in Proea.
B, Poems written in Verse.
1. The External evideucei
POETRY (HEBREW)
POETRY (HEBREW)
t. The rules for the form of Ileb. poetry : (a) the line ; (i>) the verse ; (c) parallelism ; (d) metre : the Ipinah and other kincLs of verse ; (e) the scale for the lines ; (/) strophes ; (g) subordi- nate matters of form. IL The Sfntorial of Heb. poetry.
A. Tile difTereot species of poetoy.
B, The eniploj-ment of poetry.
1. Folk-poetrj- : (n) in family life ; (6) In the life of
the community ; (c) in the religious life ; (d) in the national life.
2, The poetry of the Prophet*. S. Artistic poetry.
Poems are works of art, whose substratum is BupplicU by human speech. Since they make their impression only through oral utterance, which from its very nature dies away, they require for their perpetuation— differing in this from the works of plastic art — the medium of wTiting. By the signs of tlie latter they can afterwards be reproduced with more or less fidelity, in proportion to the Butiiciency of the system of writing and the state of preservation of the script in which it has reached ns. Like every work of art, the poem has for its chief source the creative imagination of its author ; in everj' instance a strong element of invention enters into its construction. Its aim is a;sthetic enjoyment, it seeks to work upon the senses, the emotions, the imagination, of the hearer. An ulterior purpose, namely, to influence directly the will and conduct of those who happen to make acquaintance with the poem, is, strictly speaking, sutside the scope of poetry, aa of art in general. But although a discourse whose interest is judicial, political, or social, has certainly, in spite of all the rhetorical art expended upon it, no claim to be called a poem, yet the border-line is a shifting one. Tliere are edifying, didactic, political com- positions, which in spite of their underlying ' tendency ' do not cease to be poems in the fullest sense, wliile the claim of others to this title may be disputed.
The aim of poetry may be reached without the employment of special, external, palpable means such aa distinguish the language of poetry from that of daily use. There are poems free from the trammels of verse, composed in simple prose, nay, in recent times the employment of the prose form in poetry is more common than that of verse. This is the case above all with the drama, and in the next place with the epos in the form of the novel ; it is only for lyric poetry that the use of the prose form constitutes a great exception.* In ancient times the employment of ver.se was the rule for every species of poetry ; where the prose form prevails, it will generaliy be found to be in compositions which lie upon the dubious border- line referred to above.