168 FORMS OF HEBREW POETRY
The importance of this expansion of 2 : 2 into
4 : 4 or 6 : 6, as the case may be, will appear
later.
Of the balanced rhythm, produced by the
union of three-stress lines (3 : 3), it is unnecessary
to say much at the present point. These lines
may, but rarely do, admit a caesura;^1 and this
may occur after the first or the second stress:
it may be somewhat strongly marked, as in
vnmyqy ym | xyblkv
And as a lioness--who shall rouse him up?
(Num. xxiv. 9)
or slighter as in both lines of Psalm li. 9—
rhFxv | bvzxb ynxFHt
Nyblx glwmv | ynsbkt
Unsin me with hyssop, | and I shall be clean;
Wash me, | and I shall be whiter than snow.
While, therefore, 3 : 3 differs from 2 `: 2 owing to
its greater fullness, it differs from 4 : 4 not only
1 If Vetter's theory of caesura, as propounded in his Metrilc des
Buches Job (1897), were correct, caesura in 3 : 3 would, indeed, be
common enough. For 3 : 3 is common in the Book of Job, and Vetter
argues that every line of that poem contains a caesura, and thereby
differs from Lam. i.-iv. where the longer line (of the 3 :2 distichs)
alone contains a caesura, the shorter being without one. But, according
to Vetter's own primary statistical analysis, in only 577 lines out of a
total of over 2000 is the caesura immediately obvious ; and of these
577 lines not a few are four-stress lines. In many of the three-stress
lines among the 577 there is certainly a caesura, though perhaps not
actually in all ; and Vetter's attempt to prove that there is a real
caesura in the 1500 odd lines in which it is not immediately obvious,
breaks down : see especially Konig's careful criticism in his Stylistik,
pp. 323-330. Incidentally Vetter's book contains a large amount of
carefully classified and valuable observation.