1877] POETRY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 439 



With storm wind from the east | thou breakest ships of Tarshish. 



As we heard | so have we seen, 



In the city of Jehovah of hosts | in the city of our God. 



God upholds her for ever. 1 



Among the various species of composition in which the 

 genius of Hebrew poetry finds expression, the first place is 

 unquestionably due to the lyric. As poetry is the earliest 

 form of literature, so the lyric is the earliest species of 

 poetry, and must long retain its pre-eminence in a nation 

 endued with the mental characteristics that we have 

 found in the Hebrews. For to define lyric poetry, it is 

 not enough to say that it is intended to be sung to the 

 accompaniment of instrumental music. In true art the 

 music is ruled by the thought, and the lyric is sung because 

 its contents naturally demand such an expression. It is 

 noteworthy that in primitive times lyric recitation was 

 accompanied not only by music but by dancing. 2 In 

 truth, musical utterance is to ordinary language just what 

 the dance is to that bodily action which is the natural 

 accompaniment of all speech in nations that have not 

 been schooled to suppress such demonstrations. Both 

 are forms of the eager rhythmical expression which is 

 the appropriate vehicle for absorbing personal thought. 

 Speech rises into song, and gesture becomes a dance in 

 giving utterance to an idea which springs fresh from the 

 fountain of the soul with a force that bends every faculty 

 of body as well as mind to do service in setting it forth. 



1 Very interesting analogies to the characteristic sense-rhythm of the 

 Old Testament are presented by recently discovered specimens of 

 ancient Assyrian poetry, of which English translations by Mr. Talbot 

 appeared in the Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archeology, vol. ii., 

 and which have been again examined by Schrader, Die Hollenfahrt 

 der Istar, etc. (Giessen, 1874). Professor Schrader goes so far as to 

 build on these analogies the theory that the parallelismus membrorum 

 is not an original product of the Semitic races, but a form of rhythm 

 adopted from Accadian poetry by those branches of the Semitic stem 

 which came in contact with the early Turanian culture of Babylonia. 

 See his paper, &quot; Semitismus und Babylonismus,&quot; in the Jahrbb. fur Prot. 

 Theologie, 1875, p. 121, ff. 



2 Exod. xv. 20 ; i Sam. xviii. 6 ; Ps. cxlix. 3. Comp. Iliad, xviii. 

 494. 572 ; Odyssey, i. 152. 



