And why read lyric poetry at all? Some people ask that question, and for them the case may be hopeless. If the lyric sense is utterly lacking, then it is their sad lot to live in the desert of the practical world. Art is not for them: neither music nor poetry nor painting nor sculpture nor architecture; for something of the lyric impulse lives in all of these. But many ask that question who some day will see, and for them I must attempt a brief answer. All literature is an interpretation of life, and the better one understands life the better one understands literature, and vice versa. Lyric poetry is the most direct interpretation of life, because here the poet reveals his innermost self directly. We strive to enrich our intellectual power by reliving the thought of Plato and of Kant. Why not enrich our emotional life and our whole being by reliving the world of Goethe or Shelley? The poets have lived for us, and the pure essence of their life we can make our own in their lyric verse. * * * * * ELEMENTS OF VERSIFICATION RHYTHM.-- While in Greek and Latin it depends on quantity, i.e., length of the syllables, in German as in English it depends on stress, that is, accent. The smallest rhythmical unit is called a foot and corresponds to a measure in music with the exception that the accent need not be on the first syllable. A verse consists of two or more feet (verses with only a single foot are rare) and may end either with an accented syllable (masculine ending) or with an unaccented (feminine ending). Especially within longer verses there often occurs a slight rest or break, called caesura. Designating the accented syllable by -- and the unaccented by X, the more common feet with their Graeco-Roman names may be represented thus: Iambic, X -- Trochee, -- X Dactyl, -- XX Anapaest, XX --. This terminology is, however, of little avail in the German _Volkslied_, that is the simple folksong, and in that large body of German verse which is patterned after it. Here the basic principle is the number of accented syllables. The number of unaccented syllables varies. A measure (i.e., a foot) may have either one or two unaccented syllables, in the real Volkslied often three. (A measure without an unaccented syllable, so common in older verse, is but rarely met with to-day; see 84, 7.) Goethe's more popular ballads as _Erlkönig_ or _der König in Thule_ offer good examples of this freer technique. Above all, however, Heine made use of this principle, while Platen, whom later German verse tends to follow in this respect (e.g., Meyer and Liliencron), espoused the strict classic ideal.[1] [1] Exceptions are only apparent, as in 68, 7. Platen followed the rules of Graeco-Roman prosody, where a long syllable could be substituted for two short syllables.