Or ever the sun,

And the light,

And the moon,

And the stars,

Be darkened,

And the clouds return after the rain;

In the day when the keepers of the house shall tremble,
And the strong men shall bow themselves,

And the grinders cease because they are few,

And those that look out of the windows be darkened,

And the doors shall be shut in the street;

When the sound of the grinding is low,

And one shall rise up at the voice of a bird,

And all the daughters of music shall be brought low;

Yea, they shall be afraid of that which is high,

And terrors shall be in the way;

And the almond tree shall blossom,

And the grasshopper shall be a burden,
And the caper-berry shall burst:

Because man goeth to his long home,
And the mourners go about the streets.

Or ever the silver cord be loosed,
Or the golden bowl be broken,

Or the pitcher be broken at the fountain,
Or the wheel broken at the cistern:

And the dust return to the earth,

As it was;

And the spirit return unto God

Who gave it.

In the powerful vision of Sackville every detail paints a picture; the sonnet introduces ideas which have no visible resemblance to the spectacle of old age, and yet the comparison they call for stirs a melancholy pleasure. Light fitly symbolises the joy of mere existence the darkening of sun and moon and stars recalls the gradual loss of pleasure in life for its own sake. Youth with its

troubles and quick rallying knows only the summer showers: when the rallying power is gone, "the clouds return after the rain." The "wither'd fist still knocking at death's door" stamps the picture of the infirmity upon the imagination: the shaking hands recede into the distance when, with a whole group of like infirmities, they are represented by the elements of panic in a citytrembling keepers, strong men bowed down, grinders ceasing to work and spectators to look out of windows, while every door is made fast. Similar dim symbols just touch the loss of appetite, of sleep, of voice; the timid and uncertain gait; the sparse hairs of age, its feeble strength. The sudden bursting of the caperberry that has been long shrivelling up marks the transition to the reality that is being symbolised:

Man goeth to his long home,

And the mourners go about the streets.

For the actual death that puts a period to the gradual decay other apt symbols follow: the house lamp of gold that has been secretly straining its silver chain now suddenly dropped and extinguished; the pitcher that has gone daily to the fountain, the cistern wheel that so long has mechanically turned, at last broken and useless. A long string of life's dull infirmities, from all of which realistic imagery must shrink as things unlovely, has been transformed into a thing of enduring beauty by casting over it the softening veil of symbolism.

CHAPTER IX

EPIC POETRY OF THE BIBLE

The question of
Epic Poetry in

the Bible

Ir has often been said that there is no Epic Poetry in the Bible. This opinion seems to me to be founded on a double mistake. In part it is a relic of a discarded system of criticism that did much to distort the study of literature, and at one time went to the extent of pronouncing Shakespeare no dramatist: the criticism which assumed the masterpieces of Greek and Latin literature to be the only literary standards. Of course, those who have formed their conception of Epic solely on the Iliad and Odyssey will look in vain for poems resembling these in the Bible. Again, in many minds epic poetry is associated with fiction; and to classify any portion of Sacred Scripture as epic will to such persons appear a mode of saying that it is untrue. But this is an entire misapprehension of the term. It is one thing to say that creative poetry is not, like history and philosophy, tied to reality; it is quite another thing to say that its matter may not be real. Creative poetry is a treatment which can be applied alike to fact, to idealised fact, and to purely imaginative matter.

In our examination of fundamental literary forms,1 we found that the term 'Epic' implied just two things: narrative, in contrast with dramatic presentation, and creative treatment, in contradistinction to discussion. Now more than half the Bible consists of narrative. The question, then, of Epic Poetry in the Bible narrows itself to this whether the whole of Biblical narrative is to be classified as 1 Above, page 80.