ing the advance of the God of Judgment; then in a strophe the address of God to the Saints, and in its antistrophe his address to the Sinners. The Two Paths (page 408) has a strophe, the path of the Righteous, antistrophe, the path of the Wicked; conclusion in which the two are blended in imagery of light and darkness. In the Royal Marriage Hymn (page 278), after a brief introduction, the strophe is devoted to the Bridegroom and the antistrophe to the Bride.

Especially characteristic of Biblical poetry is the Pendulum Figure, in which .the thought sways alternately from one to the other of two topics, such as Judgment and Salvation. [As printed, the lines are alternately indented to the left or the right.] A fine example is the National Hymn of the Kingdom of Judah (page 96); see note (page 479) in which the transitions between the one and the other topic are fully described.

Introversion, as an effect associated with antistrophic structure, has been described in a note (page 502) on the Song of the Exodus. Other examples are Wisdom the Supreme Prize (page 407), and the Taunt of Fallen Babylon (pp. 151-2).

A figure strange to the modern reader is Interruption: where one type of structure is interrupted in the middle by another. A simple example is the Song of Trust (page 321; see note, page 500). In the psalm on The Declining Life and The Abiding Lord (pp. 316-7) the effect is obvious.

3. Direct Metaphor, especially in the Psalms

A particular mode of conveying imagery comes to be of special importance in the poetry of the Psalms from its bearing upon questions of interpretation.

According to a well-known distinction, the Simile is a branch of imagery in which the comparison is indicated by a distinct particle (like, as, etc.) linking the image to the direct statement.

As the hart panteth after the water brooks,

So panteth my soul after thee, O God.

A Metaphor, on the contrary, has no such symbol of comparison, but the words conveying the image are interwoven into the framework of the direct sentence:

My hunted soul panteth after the water brooks of Zion.

The interweaving may be effected in a large variety of ways: and it is not difficult to see that some modifications of the expression may be such that the metaphorical element may have the appearance of direct speech. One modification of the image just cited might be

A hunted hart panteth after the water brooks of Zion:

but this is an ambiguous expression, which might be interpreted as a direct statement of fact, and not a metaphor. Such expressions I am here calling Direct Metaphors.

There are several places in the Book of Psalms where the interpretation of a

whole poem, or section of a poem, seems to turn upon the question whether certain words are metaphor or direct speech. In Psalm viii, we find—

Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou established strength, etc. This has been read as a direct statement, and various attempts have been made, with little success, to explain the allusion. It is better to understand an image: Out of man, who is, as it were, no more than a babe and suckling in comparison with the world he is to govern, hast thou established strength of rule, etc. The ordinary mistake has been caused by neglect of the structure of this psalm. The usual versions make the opening apostrophe consist of three lines:

O LORD, our Lord,

How excellent is thy name in all the earth:
Who hast set thy glory upon the heavens.

Accordingly, the commencement of the argument becomes the sentence, Out of the mouth of babes, etc., which naturally wears the air of a direct statement. But the envelope figure requires in the present case that only two lines constitute the opening (and closing) apostrophe (see pages 286, 287); and the opening of the argument now reads thus:

Who hast set thy glory upon the heavens,

Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou established strength, etc.

That the architect of the mighty heavens should have elected the mere babe, man, as his deputy over creation is the wonder, not only of the opening lines, but of the whole psalm, which takes a clear unity under the title, Man the Viceroy of God.

Again, a critical sentence in the psalm on page 96 is the following:

The children of Ephraim, being armed and carrying bows,

Turned back in the day of battle.

They kept not the covenant of God, etc.

It has been customary to see in this an allusion to a specific historical incident, though no satisfactory incident of history has been adduced. Here, again, the whole can be read as a piece of imagery: Like warriors who, in armour and with weapons in hand, turn their backs in the midst of the battle, so the children of Ephraim were treacherous to the covenant of God. No particular incident is described, but the whole defection of northern Israel from the covenant is compared to soldiers deserting on the field of battle. And this makes a suitable startingpoint for the psalm, which is a national hymn of Judah, portraying alternately God's strength displayed over his people, and their frailty resisting his purposes, until a final outburst of divine power rejects northern Israel and proclaims the house of David as the chosen people. It may be added that a not dissimilar image (but this time in simile form) occurs in a later verse:

But turned back, and dealt treacherously like their fathers:
They were turned aside like a deceitful bow.

Another important case arises in the Psalm of God's House (page 331).

Yea, the sparrow hath found her an house,

And the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young,
Even thine altars, O LORD of hosts, my king and my God.

Read as direct statement, this has been understood by some commentators to refer the psalm to the period of the exile when the temple is in ruins, the haunt of birds; others see an indication that the poet must have been a dweller in the temple precincts, accustomed to watch the birds flitting round the sacred edifice. A better interpretation is surely found by understanding an image: Like the birds finding in spring their nesting places, so the sacred seasons of the pilgrimages bring me to the altars of God. Nothing else in the psalm suggests the period of the exile, the whole being filled with the idea of the pilgrimages to Jerusalem at the sacred feasts: the passage here discussed adds the exquisite image which compares the joyous approach of the sacred festivals with a stirring instinct of birds in the nesting season. The thought is very close to the opening of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales:

Whanne that A pril with his shoures sole

The drought of Marche hath perced to the rote,
And bathed every veine in swiche licour,

Of wiche vertue engendred is the flour;
And smale foules maken melodie,
That slepen alle night with open eye,
So pricketh hem nature in hir corages;

Then longen folk to gon on pilgrimages.

A subtle and beautiful example of this effect is the regular use in Biblical poetry of the phrase in the morning: the underlying metaphor being that of night changing to day to express a sense of trouble and its passing away in deliverance. In its fullest expression the image may be seen in such passages as these:

Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy cometh in the morning.

At eventide behold terror, and before the morning they are not; this is the portion of them that spoil us.

The upright shall have dominion over them in the morning.

More indirectly, we have the same effect in the psalm on page 282.

O satisfy us in the morning with thy mercy;

That we may rejoice and be glad all our days.

Taken with the context the thought is: Let the sinful past be a night of which the succeeding morning of mercy will brighten all our future.

Outside the Book of Psalms a striking example of such Direct Metaphor is found in the second Act of the Rhapsody of Habakkuk (page 255; see note 491). The words, Wine is a treacherous dealer might be read as a proverbial saying, but is really the image on which rests the whole 'solution' of the problem: the haughty career of the Chaldeans is compared to the reeling of the drunkard which precedes his fall. Similarly, in the Doom of the Chaldeans which follows: the ideas reflected in successive strophes usury, house building, city building by violence--have often been understood directly, as characteristics of the Chaldeans. A truer interpretation is to understand each as an image, by which the sudden fall of the Chaldeans is illustrated.

4. Imagery and Symbolism

Certain portions of the O. T. contain oriental symbolism, which must be distinguished from the imagery of our western poetry. In both there is comparison of one thing to another; in imagery the comparison appeals to the imagination, whereas in symbolism the imagination must often be restrained, if the effect is to be caught. To illustrate. When we read (in Shakespeare)—

Golden lads and girls all must,

As chimney-sweepers come to dust

the imagination at once conceives a picture of the bright hair of youth as resembling gold. A passage of the Song of Songs seems at first to be imagery of this kind:

His head is of the most fine gold—

but the sentence continues

His locks are black, and bushy as a raven.

The imagination cannot conceive the same hair as both golden-colored and raven-black. But in symbolism, where the imagination is quiescent, the combination is possible: gold is the highest thing of its class, raven-black is the highest thing of its class, my love's hair must be both.

A famous tour-de-force of such oriental symbolism characterizes a sonnet in Ecclesiastes (page 434). For contrast the reader might note a stanza of the western poet Sackville presenting the same picture of old age.

Crookback'd he was, tooth shaken, and blear-eyed;
Went on three feet, and sometimes crept on four;
With old lame bones that rattled by his side,
His scalp all pill'd, and he with eld forlore;
His wither'd fist still knocking at death's door;
Tumbling and drivelling as he draws his breath:
For brief, the shape and messenger of death.

Every phrase of this impresses a picture on the imagination. The comparisons of the Biblical sonnet avoid pictures. Or ever the sun, and the light . . . be darkened: in view of the opening words of the Essay, which take the 'light' and 'sun' as symbols of the whole happiness of conscious existence, it is clear that the darkening of this light is the gradual failing of the joy of living.—And the clouds return after the rain: an exquisite symbol closely akin to the last. In youth we may overstrain and disturb our health, but we soon rally; these are storms that quickly clear up. In age the rallying power is gone: 'the clouds return after the rain.'-The keepers of the house shall tremble: Cheyne understands of the hands and arms, the trembling of which is a natural accompaniment of old age. Compare in the parallel above the withered fist knocking at death's door.-The strong men shall bow themselves: the stooping frame; the plural is merely by attraction to 'keepers.'—The grinders cease because they are few: obviously of the teeth.—Those that look out of the windows be darkened: the eyes becoming dim.-The doors shall be shut in the street: the general connection of ideas makes it inevitable that the 'folding-doors' should be the jaws; clenched jaws are so marked a feature in the skull that it is not difficult to associate them with the picture of old age.-When the sound of the grinding is low, and one shall rise up at the voice of bird, and all the daughters of music shall be brought low: these must be taken together: appetite, sleep, and speech are all feeble. Grinding must be interpreted as grinders in the previous part of the sonnet: the loud or low sound of such grinding may fitly typify the eagerness of appetite or the reverse. The early waking or short sleeping of the old is well known. The daughters of music are the tones of the voice. They shall be afraid of that which is high, and terrors shall be in the way: the gait of old age is, through physical feebleness, much what the gait of a person terrified is for other reasons. Compare Sackville's lines:

Next saw we Dread, all trembling how he shook,
With foot uncertain proffered here and there.

The almond tree shall blossom, and the grasshopper shall be a burden, and the caper-berry shall burst: the three are linked together as being images from natural objects, not because of their symbolizing similar things. The blossoming of the almond tree I believe to be the sparse white hairs of age. It would be unlikely that this obvious symptom should be omitted; and of the almond tree these two things are established: (1) it is the first to blossom (and its Hebrew name is founded on this), (2) though not strictly white its blossoms look white by contrast with other blossoms. The whitish blossoms, solitary while all is bare around, just yield the image required. The grasshopper is evidently a symbol for a small object, which is nevertheless heavy to feeble age. The caper-berry shall burst: the last stage of its decay: the failing powers at last give way. And then follows the dropping of the symbolism: "Man goeth to his long home."

So far we have had symbols for failure of powers; now for actual death and dissolution. Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken: a symbol from the house-lamp of gold, suspended by a silver cord, suddenly slipping its cord and breaking, its light becoming extinguished. For bowl in this sense compare Zechariah, chapter iv, 2, 3.—Or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the