i8 7 ;] POETRY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 441 



preserves the memory of a graceful poetry of everyday 

 life. Nor is the plaintive pathos of the funeral dirge 

 forgotten, when besides the great elegy on the slain of 

 Gilboa we can still read the simpler but not less touching 

 words in which David mourned at the grave of Abner : 



Did Abner die a felon s death ? 



Thy hands unbound, thy feet not set in fetters. 



As falls a man before villains, thou didst fall. 



An interesting but obscure indication of the varied 

 developments of the lyric genius of the Hebrews is pre 

 served in the titles of several of the Psalms. The longer 

 of these titles frequently designate the melody to which 

 the Psalm was sung by quoting two or three words of a 

 familiar song ; and our fancy is easily tempted to con 

 jecture by such broken hints as &quot; Hind of the morning 

 glow,&quot; or, &quot; Dumb dove from afar.&quot; 



The first step from pure lyric to a more artificial poetry 

 is seen in those compositions which, while exceeding the 

 limits of a simple song, attain a larger compass, not by 

 any intricate organisation or plan, but by the simple 

 agglomeration of lyrical parts. The same deficiency in 

 power to overrule the emotion of the moment, which 

 deprives Hebrew art of plastic pictorial quality, prevents 

 all really objective groupings of the parts of a lengthy 

 poem. The longest of the Psalms has no plan whatever, 

 but simply a unity of sentiment. The Book of Lamenta 

 tions is a similar series of lyrical utterances all on one key ; 

 and alike in this book and in Ps. cxix. the absence of an 

 inner principle of structure is compensated by the adop 

 tion of the purely external scheme of an alphabetic 

 acrostic. The long historical Psalms have a less artificial 

 structure, but in these also the unity is generally to be 

 sought, not in any epical grouping of events, but in an 

 underlying current of sentiment or praise which often 

 bursts out in a periodical refrain. Of this tendency 

 Ps. cxxxvi. is an extreme but by no means an exceptional 

 instance. 



