s in again in verses 17-18, an Oracle of Jeremiah's own:--

Let mine eyes with tears run down,
By night and by day,
Let them not cease from weeping(71)
For great is the breach--
Broken the Virgin, Daughter of my people,
Most sore the wound!
Fare I forth to the field,
Lo, the slain of the sword;
If I enter the city,
Lo, anguish of famine.
Priest and prophet alike are gone begging
In a land they know not.
Hast Thou utterly cast away Judah,
Loathes Sion Thy soul?
Why then hast Thou smitten us,
Past our healing?
Hoped we for peace--no good,
For time to heal--and lo panic!
Lord we acknowledge our evil,
The guilt of our fathers--
To Thee have we sinned.

And now the measure changes to one of longer irregular lines, hardly
distinguishable from rhythmical prose, which Duhm therefore takes,
precariously, as from a later hand:--

For Thy Name's sake do not despise,
Demean not the Throne of Thy Glory,
Remember and break not Thy Covenant with us!
Can any of the gentile Bubbles bring rain,
Or the Heavens give the showers?
Art not Thou He(72) on whom we must wait?
For all these Thou hast made.

Again in Ch. XV. 1-2, prose is followed by a couplet, this by more prose
(verses 3, 4) and this by verse again (verses 5-9). But these parts are
relevant to each other, and some of Duhm's objections to the prose seem
inadequate and even trifling. For while the heavy judgment is suitably
detailed by the prose, the following dirge is as naturally in verse:--

Jerusalem, who shall pity,
Who shall bemoan thee?
Who shall but turn him to ask
After thy welfare?

And once more, in the Oracle Ch. III. 1-6 the first verse, a quotation
from the law on a divorced wife, is in prose, and no one doubts that
Jeremiah himself is the quoter, while the rest, recounting Israel's
unfaithfulness to her Husband is in verse. See below, pages 98, 99.

* * * * *

So much for the varied and often irregular streams of the Prophet's verse
and their interruptions and connections by "portages" of prose. Let us
turn now from the measures to the substance and tempers of the poetry.

As in all folk-song the language is simple, but its general
inevitableness--just the fit and ringing word--stamps the verse as a true
poet's. Hence the difficulty of translating.