Stylistics is significant in literary works because each artist has a unique style of writing and it is concerned with the use of linguistic methods to study the concepts of style in a language. This study aimed at examining the use of semantics parallelism and antithetic parallelism in the Methodist Church of Southern Africa’s hymn book titled Incwadi Yenkonzo Nezingoma and the Seventh-day Adventist Church hymn book titled UKrestu EsiHlabelelweni. Aspects of poetry such as semantic parallelism and antithetic parallelism have been discussed by many in different poems, while they seem to be not recognised, particularly, in the isiZulu hymns of the two churches. The key poetic aspect that is examined is parallelism. Findings reveal that poetry and music are more related than one thinks, as much as poetry is about rhythm, flow, deeper emotions and meanings, and expressions, as is music. Attesting to this is Crosson (2008: 17) who suggests that “music and poetry have often been viewed together as both are considered “auditory, temporal and dynamic art forms”. It has also been discovered that the composers of the hymns of the above two churches mostly used parallelism in their hymns as their style to convey the message to the people of God. This paper hopes to contribute to the knowledge of how music and poetry are related and serves as a point of reference to scholars who intend to research more about hymns and poetry.

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