Page:Olney Hymns - 1840.djvu/36

 This volume is divided into three Books. The first consists of Hymns on select portions of the Old and New Testaments. No experiments in verse can be more hopeless and thankless than such. The difficulty consists partly in the ease with which scriptural passages may be shaped into measured lines, to the satisfaction of the paraphrast himself, and the indifference with which the reader receives the most successful performances of the kind, from their inevitable inferiority to (what are to him) the originals in his native tongue. With these he has been so familiarized from infancy, that no new collocation of words— even in prose, much less in rhyme— can ever be so pleasing to his ear, or convey to his mind so ineffable an impression of the meaning of the sacred oracles. In plain truth, scripture language, whether historical, poetic, or doctrinal, is so comprehensive, that in anywise to alter is to impair it; if you add you encumber; if you diminish you maim the sense; to paraphrase is to enfeeble everlasting strength; to imitate is to impoverish inexhaustible riches; and to translate into verse is necessarily to do one, or the other, or both of these, in nearly every line. For example— I purposely choose what may be called an extreme case, to make the illustration more palpable,— Ps. xix, 7, 8, "The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul; the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple:— The statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes."— The literal terms here are so perfect a vehicle of pure thought, that any metrical reading must render them less so, because words equally few and simple cannot be found in the English tongue which would express these plain sentiments in rhymes and numbers. The failure of all who have