But what of the great lines of prose that are as eloquent and compact with thought as any line of poetry? There is only one answer to that. Such lines of prose are poetry too. “In my Father’s house are many mansions” is poetry. That it looks like prose on the printed page is a matter of typesetting, and type is only the outermost husk about the shell. Hear that sentence from the Bible, think it and feel it, and you will know that it has high poetic quality. The intensity of language, the heat of high passion has made the diamond; the diamond is more beautiful after it is cut, but cutting cannot make a diamond. The outward form we shall enjoy, but we must look inward for the essential quality. As our Bible is printed, the following passage from Ecclesiastes has the appearance of prose, yet it has, too, something like the stanzaic divisions of poetry. Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them; While the sun, or the light, or the moon, or the stars be not darkened, nor the clouds return after the rain: In the day when the keepers of the house shall tremble, and the strong men shall bow themselves, and the grinders cease because they are few, and those that look out of the windows be darkened, And the doors shall be shut in the streets, when the sound of the grinding is low, and he shall rise up at the voice of the bird, and all the daughters of music shall be brought low; Also when they shall be afraid of that which is high, and fears shall be in the way, and the almond tree shall flourish, and the grasshopper shall be a burden, and desire shall fail: because man goeth to his long home, and the mourners go about the streets: Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern; Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it. Whatever else this may be, it is poetry of high power. Millions of men have found in the Bible something which is not in other books, but that it has in common with other great books the miracle of poetic utterance every right view of the Bible must admit. The passage we have just quoted is in beauty equal and not wholly dissimilar to the stanza from Keats. The Biblical poet has into a few words condensed the tragic symbols of death and sorrow; and from their dust and dissolution his soul has aspired upward to the stars.