170 FORMS OF HEBREW POETRY
character to a tristich of two-stress lines (2 : 2 : 2),
i.e. to a balancing rhythm; and in the same way
4 : 3 tends to approximate to 2 : 2 : 3, where
also the effect of echo may be and sometimes
certainly is lost. Be this, however, as it may,
neither 4 : 2 nor 4 : 3 is, as a matter of fact, at
all a frequent variation of 3 : 2, though, unless
we correct the existing text simply in order to
eliminate them, it cannot be denied that such
variations do occasionally occur in poems where
the dominant rhythm is unmistakably 3 : 2.
Such a poem is Isaiah xiv. 4-21, and the present
text contains two 4 : 2 distichs—in v. 5^1 and
v. 16 c, d. These read--
Mylwm Fbw || Myfwr hFm | hvhy rbw
Yahweh hath broken | the staff of the wicked,
The rod of the rulers;
and
tvklmm wyfrm || Crxh zygrm | wyxh hzh
Is this the man who made the earth tremble,
Who made kingdoms quake?
In both these examples the caesura dividing
the longer line into two equal halves is obvious;
and the effect produced is an approximation of
the whole of each complete period to a tristich
in balanced measure (2 : 2 : 2). True, in these
particular examples owing to the shorter line
1 Sievers' attempt to read this verse (which, to be sure, he pronounces
to be a " sehr fragliche Vers ") even in the present text as 3 : 2 by treating
Myfwr-hFm as one stress, and its parallel Mylwm Fbw as two, violates the
law discussed at the end of the last chapter.