The distinction above noticed applies also in a broader sense to other forms of lyrical composition such as the folk-song and more elaborate poetry; it recurs again in the simple song with many shades and intermediate links in its variety. With regard to particular forms applicable to this class of composition I will restrict myself to the following examples. We may mention, to start with, the _folk-song_, which, on account of its direct appeal, is mainly of the nature of the simple song, being also generally adapted to singing, or, rather, requiring the musical accompaniment. Its subject-matter is in part national exploit and event, in which the nation is emotionally made aware of and recalls again its most essential life; in part, too, feelings and situations are directly expressed which relate to particular classes. It associates, in short, civic life with its natural condition and its closest human relations, and it does so with every variety of note, whether of exultation or sorrow, which may duly harmonize with such. In contrast to the above, we have, secondly, songs of a more various and enriched culture, a culture which finds its entertainment in the companionable amusement of all kinds of pleasantry, graceful turns of phrase, casual occurrences, or polite modes of address, or, with more intensity of feeling, recurs to the pathos or necessities of less favoured conditions of life, describing therein both the facts and the consequent feelings they excite, the poet always making his appeal from his own breast and the facts of his own sympathetic experience. If such songs go no further than the bare narrative, more particularly of natural phenomena, the result is likely to be trivial and to betray the lack of imaginative resources. The bare description of emotional states, moreover, not unfrequently fares little better. The truth is that our poet in such descriptions, whether of objective facts or emotions, must not restrict his survey to the narrow outlook of direct wishes and desires, but must already in the freedom of his intelligence have raised himself into a more serene atmosphere wherein the main thing of importance to himself is the satisfaction which the exercise of his imagination has afforded. An undisturbed sense of freedom such as this, through expansion of heart and delight in conceptive idea on its own account, confers on many songs of Anacreon, as also certain poems of Hafis and the Westöstliche Divan of Goethe the rarest charm of an unfettered creative gift.