On The Art of Reading Part 17

(4) With the verse we should, I hold, go farther even than the Revisers. As you know, much of the poetry in the Bible, especially of such as was meant for music, is composed in stanzaic form, or in strophe and anti-strophe, with prelude and conclusion, sometimes with a choral refrain. We should print these, I contend, in their proper form, just as we should print an English poem in its proper form.

I shall conclude to-day with a striking instance of this, with four strophes from the 107th Psalm, taking leave to use at will the Authorised, the Revised and the Coverdale Versions. Each strophe, you will note, has a double refrain. As Dr Moulton points out, the one puts up a cry for help, the other an e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n of praise after the help has come. Each refrain has a sequel verse, which appropriately changes the motive and sets that of the next stanza:

(i)

They wandered in the wilderness in a solitary way; They found no city to dwell in.

Hungry and thirsty, Their soul fainted in them.

_Then they cried unto the Lord in their trouble,_ _And he delivered them out of their distresses._ He led them forth by a straight way, That they might go to a city of habitation.

_Oh that men would praise the Lord for his goodness,_ _And for his wonderful works to the children of men!_ For he satisfieth the longing soul, And filleth the hungry soul with goodness.

(ii)

Such as sit in darkness, and in the shadow of death, Being bound in affliction and iron; Because they rebelled against the words of G.o.d, And contemned the counsel of the most High: Therefore he brought down their heart with labour; They fell down, and there was none to help.

_Then they cried unto the Lord in their trouble,_ _And he saved them out of their distresses._ He brought them out of darkness and the shadow of death, And brake their bands in sunder.

_Oh that men would praise the Lord for his goodness,_ _And for his wonderful works to the children of men!_ For he hath broken the gates of bra.s.s, And cut the bars of iron in sunder.

(iii)

Fools because of their transgression, And because of their iniquities, are afflicted, Their soul abhorreth all manner of meat; And they draw near unto death's door.

_Then they cry unto the Lord in their trouble,_ _And he saveth them out of their distresses._ He sendeth his word and healeth them, And delivereth them from their destructions.

_Oh that men would praise the Lord for his goodness,_ _And for his wonderful works to the children of men!_ And let them offer the sacrifices of thanksgiving, And declare his works with singing:

(iv)

They that go down to the sea in s.h.i.+ps, That do business in great waters; These see the works of the Lord, And his wonders in the deep.

For he commandeth, and raiseth the stormy wind, Which lifteth up the waves thereof.

They mount up to the heaven, They go down again to the depths; Their soul melteth away because of trouble.

They reel to and fro, And stagger like a drunken man, And are at their wits' end.

_Then they cry unto the Lord in their trouble,_ _And he bringeth them out of their distresses._ He maketh the storm a calm, So that the waves thereof are still.

Then are they glad because they be quiet; So he bringeth them unto the haven where they would be.

_Oh that men would praise the Lord for his goodness,_ _And for his wonderful works to the children of men!_ Let them exalt him also in the a.s.sembly of the people, And praise him in the seat of the elders!

[Footnote 1: I borrow the verse and in part the prose of Professor W. Rhys Roberts' translation.]

LECTURE X

ON READING THE BIBLE (III)

MONDAY, MAY 6, 1918

I

My task to-day, Gentlemen, is mainly practical: to choose a particular book of Scripture and show (if I can) not only that it deserves to be enjoyed, in its English rendering, as a literary masterpiece, because it abides in that dress, an indisputable cla.s.sic for us, as surely as if it had first been composed in English; but that it can, for purposes of study, serve the purpose of any true literary school of English as readily, and as usefully, as the Prologue to "The Canterbury Tales" or "Hamlet"

or "Paradise Lost." I shall choose "The Book of Job" for several reasons, presently to be given; but beg you to understand that, while taking it for a striking ill.u.s.tration, I use it but to ill.u.s.trate; that what may be done with "Job" may, in degree, be done with "Ruth," with "Esther," with the "Psalms," "The Song of Songs," "Ecclesiastes;" with Isaiah of Jerusalem, Ezekiel, sundry of the prophets; even with St Luke's Gospel or St Paul's letters to the Churches.

My first reason, then, for choosing "Job" has already been given.

It is the most striking ill.u.s.tration to be found. Many of the Psalms touch perfection as lyrical strains: of the ecstacy of pa.s.sion in love I suppose "The Song of Songs" to express the very last word. There are chapters of Isaiah that s.n.a.t.c.h the very soul and ravish it aloft. In no literature known to me are short stories told with such sweet austerity of art as in the Gospel parables--I can even imagine a high and learned artist in words, after rejecting them as divine on many grounds, surrendering in the end to their divine artistry. But for high seriousness combined with architectonic treatment on a great scale; for sublimity of conception, working malleably within a structure which is simple, severe, complete, having a beginning, a middle and an end; for diction never less than adequate, constantly right and therefore not seldom superb, as theme, thought and utterance soar up together and make one miracle, I can name no single book of the Bible to compare with "Job."

My second reason is that the poem, being brief, compendious and quite simple in structure, can be handily expounded; "Job" is what Milton precisely called it, 'a brief model.' And my third reason (which I must not hide) is that two writers whom I mentioned in my last lecture Lord Latymer and Professor R. G.

Moulton--have already done this for me. A man who drives at practice must use the tools other men have made, so he use them with due acknowledgment; and this acknowledgment I pay by referring you to Book II of Lord Latymer's "The Poet's Charter,'

and to the a.n.a.lysis of "Job" with which Professor Moulton introduces his "Literary Study of the Bible.'

II

But I have a fourth reason, out of which I might make an apparent fifth by presenting it to you in two different ways. Those elders of you who have followed certain earlier lectures 'On the Art of Writing' may remember that they set very little store upon metre as a dividing line between poetry and prose, and no store at all upon rhyme. I am tempted to-day to go farther, and to maintain that, the larger, the sublimer, your subject is, the more impertinent rhyme becomes to it: and that this impertinence increases in a sort of geometrical progression as you advance from monosyllabic to dissyllabic and on to trisyllabic rhyme. Let me put this by a series of examples.

We start with no rhyme at all:

Hail, holy Light, offspring of Heaven first born!

Or of the Eternal coeternal beam May I express thee unblamed? since G.o.d is light, And never but in unapproached light Dwelt from eternity.

We feel of this, as we feel of a great pa.s.sage in "Hamlet" or "Lear," that here is verse at once capable of the highest sublimity and capable of sustaining its theme, of lifting and lowering it at will, with endless resource in the slide and pause of the caesura, to carry it on and on. We feel it to be adequate, too, for quite plain straightforward narrative, as in this pa.s.sage from "Balder Dead":

But from the hill of Lidskialf Odin rose, The throne, from which his eye surveys the world; And mounted Sleipner, and in darkness rode To Asgard. And the stars came out in heaven, High over Asgard, to light home the King.

But fiercely Odin gallop'd, moved in heart; And swift to Asgard, to the gate, he came.

And terribly the hoofs of Sleipner rang Along the flinty floor of Asgard streets, And the G.o.ds trembled on their golden beds-- Hearing the wrathful Father coming home-- For dread, for like a whirlwind, Odin came.

And to Valhalla's gate he rode, and left Sleipner; and Sleipner went to his own stall: And in Valhalla Odin laid him down.

Now of rhyme he were a fool who, with Lycidas, or Gray's "Elegy,"

or certain choruses of "Prometheus Unbound," or page after page of Victor Hugo in his mind, should a.s.sert it to be in itself inimical, or a hindrance, or even less than a help, to sublimity; or who, with Dante in his mind, should a.s.sert it to be, in itself, any bar to continuous and sustained sublimity. But languages differ vastly in their wealth of rhyme, and differ out of any proportion to their wealth in words: English for instance being infinitely richer than Italian in vocabulary, yet almost ridiculously poorer in dissyllabic, or feminine rhymes. Speaking generally, I should say that in proportion to its wonderful vocabulary, English is poor even in single rhymes; that the words 'love,' 'truth,' 'G.o.d,' for example, have lists of possible congeners so limited that the mind, hearing the word 'love,' runs forward to match it with 'dove' or 'above' or even with 'move': and this gives it a sense of arrest, of listening, of check, of waiting, which alike impedes the flow of Pope in imitating Homer, and of Spenser in essaying a sublime and continuous story of his own. It does well enough to carry Chaucer over any gap with a 'forsooth as I you say' or 'forsooth as I you tell': but it does so at a total cost of the sublime. And this (I think) was really at the back of Milton's mind when in the preface to "Paradise Lost" he championed blank verse against 'the jingling sound of like endings.'

But when we pa.s.s from single rhymes to double, of which Dante had an inexhaustible store, we find the English poet almost a pauper; so nearly a pauper that he has to achieve each new rhyme by a trick--which tricking is fatal to rapture, alike in the poet and the hearer. Let me instance a poem which, planned for sublimity, keeps tumbling flat upon earth through the inherent fault of the machine--I mean Myers's "St Paul"--a poem which, finely conceived, pondered, worked and re-worked upon in edition after edition, was from the first condemned (to my mind) by the technical bar of dissyllabic rhyme which the poet unhappily chose. I take one of its most deeply felt pa.s.sages--that of St Paul protesting against his conversion being taken for instantaneous, wholly accounted for by the miraculous vision related in the "Acts of the Apostles":

Let no man think that sudden in a minute All is accomplished and the work is done;-- Though with thine earliest dawn thou shouldst begin it Scarce were it ended in thy setting sun.

Oh the regret, the struggle and the failing!

Oh the days desolate and useless years!

Vows in the night, so fierce and unavailing!

Stings of my shame and pa.s.sion of my tears!

How have I seen in Araby Orion, Seen without seeing, till he set again, Known the night-noise and thunder of the lion, Silence and sounds of the prodigious plain!

How have I knelt with arms of my aspiring Lifted all night in irresponsive air, Dazed and amazed with overmuch desiring, Blank with the utter agony of prayer!

'What,' ye will say, 'and thou who at Damascus Sawest the splendour, answeredst the Voice; So hast thou suffered and canst dare to ask us, Paul of the Romans, bidding us rejoice?'

You cannot say I have instanced a pa.s.sage anything short of fine.

But do you not feel that a man who is searching for a rhyme to Damascus has not really the time to cry 'Abba, father'? Is not your own rapture interrupted by some wonder 'How will he bring it off'? And when he has searched and contrived to 'ask us,' are we responsive to the ecstacy? Has he not--if I may employ an Oriental trope for once--let in the chill breath of cleverness upon the garden of beat.i.tude? No man can be clever and ecstatic at the same moment[1].

As for triple rhymes--rhymes of the comedian who had a lot o'

news with many curious facts about the square on the hypotenuse, or the ca.s.siowary who ate the missionary on the plains of Timbuctoo, with Bible, prayer-book, hymn-book too--they are for the facetious, and removed, as far as geometrical progression can remove them, from any "Paradise Lost" or "Regained."