as made to be sung. It almost made itself. It had two
qualities--the expression of strong feeling of some kind, and some sort
of rhythm that could be put into song. Ever since the days when all men
were savages, and told simple stories and sang rude songs as they
gathered about the campfires, those two things have marked the
difference between poetry and prose. Poetry must have feeling and
rhythm. In most languages the rhythm is one of sound. The words flow
along so easily that they run themselves into a sort of tune. That is
what is called measure. Measure cannot be easily translated from one
language to another. Even if it could, it would not always be so
beautiful as it is in the language in which it is first written. So it
comes about that we do not often try to get the rhythm of the words in
the poetry of the Bible. Indeed, scholars have puzzled themselves
greatly over just what sort of rhythm the words of Hebrew poetry have.
The Hebrews who wrote the poetry did not think it worth while to say
anything about that, and later men forgot that there was any rhythm at
all; so now it has to be all discovered over again. But Hebrew poetry
has also another kind of rhythm beside that of words--a kind which
English poetry does not have. It is the rhythm of thought. In Hebrew
poetry a thought is expressed in the first line, {12} then either
repeated with some slight change, its opposite expressed, or something
added to it, in the second. The following are illustrations:--

The thought repeated:--

The Lord is my light and my salvation;
whom shall I fear?
The Lord is the strength of my life;
of whom shall I be afraid?

The opposite expressed:--

A wise son maketh a glad father,
But a foolish son is the heaviness of his mother.

Additions made to the thought:--

All the paths of the Lord are lovingkindness and truth
Unto such as keep his covenant and his testimonies.

This rhythm of thought is called parallelism; and parallelism is the one
thing that makes Hebrew poetry differ from prose.

In most Eastern languages the line between poetry and prose is not so
sharply drawn as in our Western languages. When a man made a speech, it
often fell quite naturally into poetry. So a good deal of the talk of
Jesus, even, seems to have been in the form of Hebrew poetry; as when he
said:--

{13}

Be not anxious for your life,
what ye shall eat or what ye shall drink,
Nor yet for your body,