The stately Greek measures now give way to the love-songs of Chivalry and Romance--to the measures of the Minnesinger and the Troubadour. Faust kneels in homage before the impersonation of ideal beauty, and Helen feels that she is _now_ no longer a mere ideal, a mere phantom. She clings to her new, unknown lover, as to one who will make her realize her own existence. It is an allegory of modern art--the art of Dante, Giotto, Raphael, Shakespeare and Goethe--receiving as its queen the ideal of Greek imagination and inspiring, as it were, the cold statue with the warm vitality of a higher conception of chivalrous love and perfect womanhood. I have mentioned how the stately Greek measures in the _Helena_ give way to the metres of Romance and Chivalry. Perhaps it may be well to explain some of these various metres. The scene opens, as you know, with Helen's dignified and beautiful speech: Bewundert viel und viel gescholten Helena. That is the well-known _iambic trimeter_, _i.e._ the metre of six feet (twelve syllables) used in all the speeches in Greek tragedy. Thus the _Oedipus Tyrannos_ of Sophocles begins: [Greek: Ô tekna, Kadmou tou palai nea trophê] and so on. It has twelve syllables, mostly (iambics) as in our blank verse. But blank verse has only ten syllables: 'I cannot tell what you and other men.' If one adds two syllables one gets the Greek iambic verse, thus: 'I cannot tell what you and other men believe.' The Chorus in the _Helena_ uses various rhythms such as are found in the choruses of Greek tragedy: Schweige, schweige, Missblickende, missredende du! Aus so grässlichen, einzahnigen Lippen was enthaucht wohl Solchem furchtbaren Greuelschlund! Then Mephistopheles, as the Phorkyad, when Helen falls fainting, addresses her suddenly in another measure--a longer verse, such as is sometimes used by the Greek tragedians and comedians when something new occurs in the play. It is called a _tetrameter_, and consists of fifteen syllables (mostly - U, called trochees). Thus, in Greek, [Greek: oi gerontes oi palaioi memphomestha tê polei]--and in German: Tritt hervor aus flüchtigen Wolken hohe Sonne dieses Tags-- or the fine lines spoken by Helen: Doch es ziemet Königinnen, allen Menschen ziemt es wohl, Sich zu fassen, zu ermannen, was auch drohend überrascht. When Faust appears he begins to speak at once in modern blank verse of ten syllables, such as we know in Milton and Shakespeare and Schiller. One might have expected him to speak in some earlier romantic measure, to have used perhaps the metre of the old Nibelungenlied, as in Es ist in alten Mähren wunders viel geseit, Von Heleden lobebären, von grosser Arebeit, which is supposed to date from about 1150; or in Dante's _terza rima_, of about 1300, as Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita.