is;;] POETRY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 429 



emotion. Once and again, at ver. 24, 31, this emotion 

 breaks out in pure song ; and at length the point of rest 

 in which every poem must end, and which could not be 

 found in the contemplation of nature, is reached in the 

 concluding strain of praise, ver. 33-35. l 



All this is but a special application to the sphere of 

 religious life of the more general law that the Semitic 

 imagination assimilates objective phenomena only in so 

 far as they are held in solution by personal interest or 

 strong emotion. The world of nature is orderly and 

 beautiful only as the reflex of the world of moral and 

 spiritual relations. But the principle obviously works 

 in two directions. If the Hebrew instinctively views 

 nature in the light of its spiritual meaning, he as instinc 

 tively gives to every spiritual perception a symbolical and 

 sensuous expression. And since, as we have already seen, 

 the idea of natural possibility or probability does not 

 exist for the Semite, the expression is subject to no 

 condition save that of appropriateness to the thought set 

 forth. Thus the whole realm of visible phenomena stands 

 free to the poet to be dealt with as he will. The multi 

 plicity of the universe becomes one vast chorus of living 

 things moving responsive to the action of the spiritual 

 stage, without restraint of natural law. Especially is this 

 the case in the description of the being and work of 



1 No better illustration can be found of the difference between the 

 Hebrew and Occidental treatment of the same ideas than is supplied by 

 a comparison of Buchanan s paraphrases of the nature-Psalms. A 

 good instance is the treatment of the sun in Ps. xix., or, to confine our 

 selves to Ps. civ., take the following passage, in which every variation 

 from the Hebrew tends to an increase of plastic pictorial delineation, 

 with a corresponding diminution in the directness with which the 

 religious emotion dominates each line of the original : 



Turn liquidi fontes imis de collibus augent 

 Flumina, per virides undas volventia campos : 

 Unde sitim sedent pecudes, quae pinguia tondent 

 Pascua, quique feris onager saxa invia silvis 

 Incolit : hie levibus quae tranant aera pennis 

 Per virides passim ramos sua tecta volucres 

 Concelebrant, mulcentque vagis loca sola querelis. 



