ass, the wild ox,[1] the ostrich, the war horse, the hawk and the eagle. It is to this portion that the student must turn who would fain know the highest attainments of the Hebrew genius in pure poetry, such as Milton would have recognised as poetry. The delighted wonder with which the writer enters into the habits of the animals, and the light and graceful movement of the verse, make the ten descriptions referred to an ever-attractive theme, I will not say for the translator, but for the interpreter. They are ideal, as the Greek sculptures are ideal, and need the pen of that poet-student, faint hints of whose coming have been given us in Herder and Rückert. The finest of them, of course, is that of one of the animals most nearly related in Arabia to man (in Arabia, but not in Judæa), the horse.
Dost thou give might to the horse?
Dost thou clothe his neck with waving mane?
Dost thou make him bound as a locust?
The peal of his snort is terrible!
He paws in the valley and rejoices in his strength;
he goes forth to meet the weapons;
he laughs at fear, and is not dismayed,
and recoils not from the sword:
the quiver clangs upon him,
the flashing lance and the javelin:
bounding furiously he swallows the ground,
and cannot stand still at the blast of the trumpet;
at every blast he says, 'Aha!'
and smells the battle from afar,
the captain's thunder and the cry of battle (xxxix. 19-25).
The terrible element in animal instincts seems indeed to fascinate the mind of our poet; he closes his gallery with a sketch of the cruel instincts of the glorious eagle. We are
- [Footnote: lābhī in iv. 11 is the feminine is no objection. Comp. Ps. lvii. 5, and perhaps Hos.
xiii. 8. Possibly, however, the 'raven' was inserted here to make up the number ten, by a reminiscence of Ps. cxlvii. 9.]
- ↑ The 'unicorn' of A. V. comes from the Sept. and Vulg.; but in Deut. xxxiii. 17 the re'ēm is said to have 'horns.' Schlottmann and Delitzsch identify it with the oryx or antelope, but the oryx was tamable (Wilkinson, Egyptians, i. 227), whereas our poet asks, 'Will the re'ēm be willing to serve thee?' See Cheyne on Isa. xxxiv. 7.
