cover tin- earth as the dung which covers the surface
of the Gelds. The impious man sows crime and reaps
misery, or he sows the wind and reaps the tempest.
The people yielding to the blows of their enemies arc
like the corn crushed beneath the threshing instrument
God tramples the wine in the wine-press when ho chas-
i'hi ious and Bheds their bl I. The wrath of
Jehovah i- often represented as an intoxicating cup,
which he causes those to empty who have mi rited bis
chastisement: terrors and anguish are often compared
to the pangs of childbirth. Peoples, towns, and states
under the image
of daughters "r wives; in their impiety they are cour-
dlusions of mosl
frequent occurrence are taken from the catastrophe of
id Gomorrah, the miracles of the departure
j pt, and the appearance ol Ji h ah on Sinai."
I hi easily be multiplied in illustration of
this remarkable characteristic of the Hebrew poets:
thi y -tand thick upon every page of their writings, and
in striking contrast to the vague generalizati I the
Indian philosophic p.., try. There is accordingly no Poetry which hear- a deeper or broader stamp of the peculiar influences under which it was produced. It H brew in order to become miner- sal, and yet ii is universal while it i- Hebrew. The country, the clime, the institutions, the very peculiar institutions, rites, and observances,' the very religious history of the Israelites, are all faith- • i idlj i. flecti d in tin- ll, brew muse, so thai iki ii for a poem of any Still ii remain- true thai the hi Sri ol In heart of all the m,, -i civilized nations m,,\e,i and Bwayi d. and i- -till ved'and swayed by
can he put into * lhal of the ll, brews hut thai of the Rome, and that of India. 1 t thai the poi ti
ol ih- Hebrev . I pic poetry
so lar a- mere
«er.- cultivated successfully by them,
1 find niih their •'erm-
and firm rudimenta. So in execution we may al-, ad-
""i ihat. m ih,- higher qualities nf stvle, He
r. Hut' the ,:
ion; the kernel than the .-hell;
I and in Bubstance the Hebrew poetry far surpass - i very other. In truth, it dwells in a region to which other ancient literatures did not and could not attain— a pure, -ereue. moral, and religious atmosphere: thus dealing with man in bis highest relations, tir-t anticipating, and then leading onwards, mere civilization. Thi-. a- we shall presently Bee more fully, is the great character- istic of Hebrew poetry: it is al-o the highest merit of any literature, a merit in which that of the Hebrews is unapproached. To thi- high quality it is owing that the poetry of the Bible has exerted on the loftiest in- terests and productions of the human mind, for now above two thousand years, the mosl decided ami the mosl beneficial influence. Moral and religious truth is deathless and undecaying; and so the griefs and the joys of David, or the far-seeing warnings and brilliant portrayings of Isaiah, repeat t hem-elves in the heart of each successive generation, and become coexistent wnh the race of man. Thus of all moral treasuries the parably the richest. Even for forms of poetry, in which it is defective, or altogether fails, it pn SI ni- the richest materials. Moses has not. a- some
have dreamed, left us an epic poem, hut he ha- supplied
the materials out of which the /'<irn>l<.<r Lost was cre- ated. The sternly Bublime drama of SamSOfl \ >/> >„!.</, .< i- constructed from a few materials found in a chapter ,,r two which relate to the least cultivated period of the 11,1, ivw republic. Indeed, mosl of the greal poets, even of modern days, from Tasso down to Byron, all the great musicians, and nearly all the great painters, have drawn their lust and highest inspiration from the Bible.
1 1 may have struck the reader as .somewhat curious
that the poetical pieces of w huh we spoke a hove should. in the common version of the Bible, be scarcely, if at all. distinguishable from prose. We do not know whether there is anything extraordinary in this. Much of clas- sical poetry, if turned into English prose, would lose most of it- p,,etic characteristics; hut. in general, the Hebrew poetry Buffers less than perhaps any other by transfusion into a prosaic element: to which fact it is owing that the book of Psalms, in the English version, is. notwithstanding its form, eminently poetic. There are. however, cases in which only the experienced eye can trace the poetic in and under the prosaic attire in which il appears in the vulgar translation. Nor until the subject of Hebrew poetry had been Ion- and well studied did the learned succeed in detecting many a poetic gem contained in the Bible. In truth, poetry
and prose, from their very nature, -land near to ■ :i'h other, and in the earlier stages f\' their existence are discriminated only by faint and vanishing lines. If we regard the thought, prose sometimes even now rises to i he loftiness of poetry. If we regard the clothing, the simpler form of poetry is scarcely more than prose: and rhetorical or measured prose passes into the domain of poetry. A sonnet of Wordsworth could he converted into prose with a very few changes; a fable of Krum- macher requires only to he distributed into lines in or- der t" make blank verse. Now in translations the form i- f,,r the tno-t pari lost; there remains only the suh- stance, and poetic sentiment ranges from the humblest t,, the loftiest topi,-. So with the Hebrew poetry in its original and native state. Whether in ii- case poetry sprang from prose, or pros;' from poetry, they are both branches of one inc. and hear in their earlier stages a very close resemblance. The similarity is the greater in the literature of the Hebrews, because their poetic form- an- less ,l, terminate than those of some other na- tions: they had, in, Iced, a rhythm; but so had their