thing proper to
oratorical prose in all languages. Accordingly in Hebrew prose and verse
overlap: the extremes of either (e.g. Psalms and Chronicles) are
strongly contrasted, but there is a middle style which can be presented
in either form. Hence there is nothing strange in the fact that the same
passage of Scripture may be presented by one editor as prose and by
another as verse, according to the purpose of each arrangement. [For
example: the Oration on Immortality (page 75), which for a specimen of
oratory is here arranged as prose, is printed as verse in the Revised
Version of the Apocrypha.]

1. The simplest type of parallelism in Biblical literature may be called
'Antique Rhythm.' It is the metre of most of the traditional poetry
preserved in the historic books of Scripture. Its unit consists in a
couplet, of which either member may be strengthened by a parallel line,
but not both.

Let me die the death of the righteous.
And let my last end be like his!

He saith, which heareth the words of God,
Which seeth the vision of the Almighty,
Falling down, and having his eyes open.

He shall eat up the nations his adversaries,
And shall break their bones in pieces,
And smite them through with his arrows.

Such a unit may be called a 'strain.' It will be seen in the examples
that the first strain is a simple couplet, the second has its first line
strengthened, the last has its second line strengthened. This power of
occasionally strengthening either line of a couplet by an additional
line gives the Antique Rhythm a flexibility suited to spontaneous
composition. A similar device is found in connection with the
traditional ballad poetry of England, of which such collections as The
Percy Reliques are accidentally preserved specimens. While the regular
metre of such ballads is a four-line stanza, yet a few poems, such as
the Ballad of Sir Cauline, show some stanzas with individual lines
strengthened:

Fair Christabel, that lady mild,
Was had forth of her tower;
But ever she droopeth in her mind,
As nipt by an ungentle wind
Doth some pale lily flower.

The poetry of the historic books mostly takes the form of aggregations
of such 'strains' of Antique Rhythm, with no further structure.
Occasionally such a poem will fall into verse paragraphs or 'strophes'
[to be distinguished from the antistrophic system presently to be
described]: an example is David's Song of Victory (see note