even to tell whether there
were fixed rules for it; the vowel-system of our Hebrew text being
possibly different from what prevailed in ancient Hebrew. But on the whole
it is probable that as in other primitive poetries(42) there were no exact
or rigorous rules as to the proportion of beats or stresses in the single
lines. For the rhythm of sense is the main thing--the ruling factor--and
though the effort to express this in equal or regularly proportioned lines
is always perceptible, yet in the more primitive forms of the poetry just
as in some English folk-songs and ballads the effort did not constantly
succeed. The art of the poet was not always equal to the strength of his
passion or the length of his vision, or the urgency of his meaning. The
meaning was the main thing and had to be beat out, even though to effect
this was to make the lines irregular. As I have said in my Schweich
Lectures: "If the Hebrew poet be so constantly bent on a rhythm of sense
this must inevitably modify his rhythms of sound. If his first aim be to
produce lines each more or less complete in meaning, but so as to run
parallel to its fellow, it follows that these lines cannot be always
exactly regular in length or measure of time. If the governing principle
of the poetry requires each line to be a clause or sentence in itself, the
lines will frequently tend, of course within limits, to have more or fewer
stresses than are normal throughout the poem."

But there are other explanations of the metrical irregularities in the
traditional text of Hebrew poems, which make it probable that these
irregularities are often original and not always (as they sometimes are)
the blunders of copyists. In all forms of Eastern art we trace the
influence of what we may call Symmetriphobia, an aversion to absolute
symmetry which expresses itself in more or less arbitrary disturbances of
the style or pattern of the work. The visitor to the East knows how this
influence operates in weaving and architecture. But its opportunities are
more frequent, and may be used more gracefully, in the art of poetry. For
instance, in many an Old Testament poem in which a single form of metre
prevails there is introduced at intervals, and especially at the end of a
strophe, a longer and heavier line, similar to what the Germans call the
"Schwellvers" in their primitive ballads. And this metrical irregularity
is generally to the profit both of the music and of the meaning.

Furthe