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90 FRANCIS BACON'S CRYPTIC RHYMES
employed for the first time, suddenly the word " Stage "
stands out prominently, although
it is not contained in
the Hebrew psalm.
Bacon's QOth Psalm begins thus :
O Lord, thou art our Home, to whom we fly,
And so hast always been from Age to Age.
Before the Hills did intercept the Eye,
Or that the Frame was up of Earthly Stage,
One God thou wert, and art, and still shall be ;
The Line of Time, it doth not measure thee.
In the Bible the words run thus :
Lord, thou hast been our dwelling-place in all generations.
2. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst
formed the earth and the world :
lasting, thou art God.
even from everlasting to ever
The rhyme
" from Age to Age " and " Earthly
Stage " is an entirely new combination added by
Bacon. The plain word "earth" becomes "Earthly
Stage," a form almost identical with that of "Globe
Stage" or " Globe Theatre," a word in almost every
mouth in London.
And, lest it should be overlooked by the reader,
Bacon introduces the word " Stage " again in rhyme,
at the very end of the psalm. It is the same psalm
in
which he has interwoven the beautiful comparison
between human life and the short dream of a Mid
summer Night and if we look
;
more closely, we shall
find many other perfectly Shakespearean sayings and
similes.
Now, considering the instances brought forward in
the foregoing, surely no one who knows anything of
poetic art will maintain that such additions were made
merely to fill up the verse, or secure a rhyme. Such