download PDF version: 47.1MB - Global Grey

FRANCIS BACON'S CRYPTIC RHYMES 91
an idea would be contradicted flatly by the intrinsic
worth, the sterling value, of those additions. For
even when our poet wishes to be brief and yet adhere
closely to the words of the original psalms, he is never
at a loss for the right expression. Choosing again at
random we take the passage as altered by Bacon :
Who sowes in Tears, shall reap in Joy.
how much
And, although half the line is repeated,
more powerful in effect than the words in the
English, French, Latin, or German Bible, is the
passage in the i37th Psalm in the brief, salient form
in which Bacon clothes it :
Down with it, down with it,
even to the ground !
No man, stammering
verses for the first
time in his
life, could have penned such a line. The shifting
accent on the repeated words. " "
Down with it !
pro
duces the powerful effect. Every syllable tells :
Down with' it,
down' with it' !
A similar effect is
produced by shifting the accent
on repeated words, in the stirring dialogue between
Wrangel and Wallenstein (in Schiller's Death of
Wallenstein, i. 5),
in which the Swedish Colonel
explains to the Duke that it is too late for him to
return to the Emperor :
WRANGEL.
Vielleicht vor wenig Tagen noch.
Heut' nicht' mehr.
Seit der Sesin' gefangen sitzt, nicht mehr'.
But, as in many points the translations of the psalms
have been shown to resemble the Shakespeare plays
in beauty of poetic thought, and even more so in form,
so we shall find that they do not lack those eccentrici
ties with which we became familiar in the plays.