172 FORMS OF HEBREW POETRY
and one only of the two pairs of words that
constitute the first line. Here again the caesura
in the longer line is obvious; and in this instance
there is no sense echo even; the real parallelism
is between the two halves of the longer line; the
parallel scheme is a. b | a'. b' | c. d, and the
approximation to a balanced tristich 2 : 2 : 2
strikingly close.
Whether either 4 : 2 or 4 : 3 ever acquired the
same independence as 2 : 2, 3 : 3, 4 : 4, or 3 : 2
is doubtful; neither ever seems to constitute
the dominant rhythm of a poem of any length,
still less to prevail throughout such a poem.
But neither 4 : 2 nor 4 : 3 is a mere variant of
3 : 2; as such the occurrence of these rhythms
is at most very infrequent. On the other hand,
the existence certainly of 4 : 2, and probably of
4 : 3, apart from poems in which the dominant
rhythm is 3 : 2, is well established. Sievers
was, I believe, the first to claim clearly that 4 : 3
was, so to speak, a rhythm in its own right,
that, at all events, it was not only a mere variant
of 3 : 2; he thereby made it possible to regard
certain poems as more regular than they had
previously appeared to be. In his earlier work^1
1 Metrische Studien, i. 102, 117, 569-571. In his Text-proben he
found, in addition to many examples in Ps. ix., x. discussed above,
several doubtful examples of 4 : 3 in Ps. iv., and six or seven examples
in Mal. i. 10-73. A few other examples selected from his Text-proben
or his collection in the appendix (570 f.) are : Judg. v. 4 c, d ; Ps. i.
5, 6, xii. 4 ; Job iii. 6 (to hnw), iv. 10, 11 ; Prov. i. 5, 8 ; Isa. xl. 12 c, d.
An example not cited by Sievers may be found in the present text