HEBREW POETRY. 59 



rtod compass, the M'hole universe — the heavens and the earth 

 — sketched vvath a few bold touches. The calm and toilsome 

 labor of man, from the rising of the sun to the setting of the 

 same, when his daily work is done, is here contrasted with 

 the moving life of the elements of nature. This contrast and 

 generalization in the conception of the mutual action of natu« 

 ral phenomena, and this retrospection of an omnipresent invis- 

 ible powei:. which can renew the earth or crumble it to dust, 

 constitute a solemn and exalted rather than a glowing and 

 gentle form, of poetic creation. 



Similar views of the Cosmos occur repeatedly in the Psalms* 

 (Psalm Ixv., 7-14, and Ixxiv., 15-17), and most fully, per- 

 haps, in the 37th chapter of the ancient, if not ante-Mosaic 

 Book of Job. The meteorological processes which take place 

 in the atmosphere, the formation and solution of vapor, ac- 

 cording to the changing direction of the wind, the play of its 

 colors, the generation of hail and of the rolling thunder, are 

 described with individualizing accuracy ; and many questions 

 are propounded which we in the present state of our physical 

 knowledge may indeed be able to express under more scien- 

 tific definitions, but scarcely to answer satisfactorily. The 

 Book of Job is generally regarded as the most perfect speci- 

 men of the poetry of the Hebrews. It is alike picturesque in 

 the delineation of individual phenomena, and artistically skill- 

 ful in the didactic arrangement of the whole work. In all 

 the modern languages into which the Book of Job has been 

 translated, its images, drawn from the natural scenery of the 

 East, leave a deep impression on the mind. " The Lord 

 walketh on the heights of the waters, on the ridges of the 

 waves towering high beneath the force of the wind." " The 

 morning red has colored the margins of the earth, and vari 

 ously formed the covering of clouds, as the hand of man molds 

 the yielding clay." The habits of animals are described, as, 

 for instance, those of the wild ass, the horse, the buffalo, the 

 rhinoceros, and the crocodile, the eagle and the ostrich. We 

 see " the pure ether spread, during the scorching heat of the 

 south wind, as a melted mirror over the parched desert. "t 



* Noble echoes of the ancient Hebraic poetry are found in the elev- 

 enth century, in the hymns of the Spanish Synagogue poet, Salomo ben 

 Jehudah Gabirol, which contain a poetic paraphrase of the pseudo-Ar- 

 istotelian book, De Mundo. See Die Religiose Poesie der Juden in 

 Spanien, by Michael Sachs, 1845, s. 7, 217, and 22^. The sketches, 

 drawn from nature, and found in the writings of Mose ben Jakob ben 

 Esra (s. 69, 77, and 285), are full of vigor and grandeur. 



t I have taken the passages in the Book of Job from the translation 



