Page:Columbia University Lectures on Literature (1911).djvu/44

30 form of its more fortunate brother. In modern times it must perforce take on a modern dress; and the great Italian, English, German, and French poets become its models. During the Biblical period the form is rugged, the license with which the poet moves is great; so much so that even to this day and despite the many theories that have been put forward, the proper scanning of Biblical verse, if there is any such scanning, is still unknown. In the Arabic period it is the Kasidah that holds sway, and the old tongue is forced to sing in Arabic metres. After the Reformation, canto, terzett, and hexameter exert their influence; and our Hebrew poets of to-day — for the ancient tongue has never died out — have a freedom of expression and a privilege to develop the language which their forbears would have envied. Yet, throughout all, it is the same noble language of the Bible that speaks and sings, the same simple constructions that please and fascinate. It is true that a great deal of Israel's post-Biblical poetry is of a purely religious character; religion, up to recent times, was the all in all to those that sang and to those that listened. But in Spain and in modern times, these exclusive fetters have been cast off. Love and wine and the lighter moments of human existence found expression also. Hebrew was not only a church language; it was the medium of intercourse between the scattered members of the Jewish people, and almost the only means by which they expressed thought and feeling.

Unfortunately, this cannot be said of the literary development of Oriental Christians. But those living in Syria and Mesopotamia, and the later converts in the highlands of Ethiopia, have produced a large, and in some ways an important body of Literature. The first of these, the most prominent survival of the Aramaic race, preserved its language merely as a Church tongue. The Arabic invasion in the seventh century did not only level all political distinctions; it routed, also, the civilizations with which it came in contact,