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26 see that the rhythm is not called into existence as a necessity of such expansion of the thought, but vice versa this mode of expanding the thought results from the requirements of the rhythm. Here is neither synonymous or identical (tautological), nor antithetical, nor synthetical parallelism, but merely that which De Wette calls rhythmical, merely the rhythmical rise and fall, the diastole and systole, which poetry is otherwise (without binding itself) wont to accomplish by two different kinds of ascending and descending logical organization. The ascending and descending rhythm does not usually exist within the compass of one line, but it is distributed over two lines which bear the relation to one another of rhythmical antecedent and consequent, of proodo's and epoodo's. This distich is the simplest ground-form of the strophe, which is visible in the earliest song, handed down to us, Gen 4:23. The whole Ps 119 is composed in such distichs, which is the usual form of the apophthegm; the acrostic letter stands there at the head of each distich, just as at the head of each line in the likewise distichic pair, Ps 111-112. The tristich is an outgrowth from the distich, the ascending rhythm being prolonged through two liens and the fall commencing only in the third, e.g., Psa 25:7 (the ח of this alphabetical Psalm):

Have not the sins of my youth and my transgressions in remembrance, According to Thy mercy remember Thou me For Thy goodness' sake, O Jahve!

This at least is the natural origin of the tristich, which moreover in connection with a most varied logical organization still has the inalienable peculiarity, that the full fall is reserved until the third line, e.g., in the first two strophes of the Lamentations of Jeremiah, where each line is a long line in two parts consisting of rise and fall, the principal fall, however, after the caesura of the third long line, closes the strophe:

Ah! how doth the city sit solitary, otherwise full of people! She is become as a widow, the great one among nations, The princess among provinces, she is become tributary. By night she weepeth sore and her tears are upon her cheeks; There is not one to comfort her of all her lovers, All her friends have betrayed her, they are become her enemies.

If we now further enquire, whether Hebrew poesy goes beyond these simplest beginnings of the strophe-formation and even