A Papago harvest song, for instance, balances high and low pitched measures in rising three syllabled rhythm, which suggests a dance with gesture or swaying of the body. In each phrase of the song, the foot of the higher pitch carries the heavier stress. This double use of pitch and stress, or accent, in phrases of two measures runs throughout the song, showing the regularity of metrical pattern to be expected where the lyric accompanies action or ritual observance. Such definite schemes of short measures do not appear as commonly as in English lyric poetry. In many Indian lyrics there is a tendency to avoid such emphatic rhythms—a tendency toward the free rhythms, though the sense of measure is never lost. On the whole, Indian lyric poetry is highly rhythmical in structure, although not closely metrical. The most interesting metrical patterns are the long units which almost escape the ear as they die away in the low pitched glottal vibrations of a glide. In these measures, liquid consonants frequently combine with open vowels; though a Chippewa singer may take _b_, _t_, _g_, and _k_ in one long unit. The singer finds the feet of eight and nine syllables easiest when they are made up of vocables or of elongations of a syllable, as _e-ye-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-_, receding in delicate sound waves and requiring no effort in enunciation. These sound waves may occur as a scarcely perceptible double pulsation within the long unit, in such syllables as _e-ya_, _ai-ya_, which require little articulation. The poet can sing them indefinitely, as they fall into the rhythm of respiration. This syllabic group is the irreducible unit within the foot; if we eliminate the lengthening of a vowel, a device for the singer rather than for the poet. The function of the vocable in the metrical design is nonessential from the intellectual viewpoint; but there is a clear value, from an æsthetic viewpoint, in the full rounded vowels of many syllables. They give tone color to the whole song, and enrich the metrical design. The range in metrical patterns gives infinite variety and freedom to Indian verse. The poet varies even his repetition of rhythmic phrases by using different degrees of pitch. By far the most notable element in Indian versification, in fact, is this art of combining dissimilar rhythms and of playing one against another with the effect of many instruments. All the subtlety of charm and melody in the verse evades analysis in the study of rhythms; yet poetry is no less beautiful because we catch the grace of a flowing line and the play of assonance through open syllables, as in the Zuñi _Sunset Song_; the contrasting gaiety of light, quick, staccato movement; or the faultless symmetry of antiphonals. It is extremely difficult to interpret in terms of occidental prosody the poetic genius which arose from an alien civilization. We must constantly return to our cultural backgrounds for explanation.