med on the
arrival of Menelaus and that she herself (Helen) is the destined victim.

In despair Helen appeals to the Gorgon for advice, who bids her take
refuge in the neighbouring mountains of Arcadia, where a robber
chieftain has his stronghold. Under the guidance of Mephisto, who raises
a thick mist, she and her maidens escape. They climb the mountain; the
mists rise and they find themselves before the castle of a medieval
bandit-prince, and it is Faust himself who comes forth to greet her and
to welcome her as his queen and mistress. Faust, the symbol of the
Renaissance and modern art, welcomes to his castle the ideal of Greek
art and beauty.

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: O tekna, Kadmou tou palai nea trophe]

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 graesslichen, einzahnigen
Lippen was enthaucht wohl
Solchem furchtbaren Greuelschlund!

Then Mephistopheles, as the Phorkyad, when Helen falls fainting,
a