Aus dem bewegten Wasser rauscht
Ein feuchtes Weib hervor.
REFRAIN.—This is a repetition of one or more verses, either exactly repeated or slightly modified, at the end of a stanza or less frequently at another fixed place (4, 10, 34). Aside from its rhythmic-melodic effect the refrain helps to center the attention on a certain idea or motif.
STANZA AND VERSE FORMS.—Only a few need any special discussion.
1. Blank Verse. This is the verse of Shakspere and was introduced into Germany from England. It is an unrhymed iambic verse of five feet (19).
2. Freie Rhythmen. An unrhymed verse that does not follow any fixed form; the rhythm may vary even within the verse. The number of accented syllables usually does not exceed four (15, 16 and 59).
3. The Rhymed Couplet ( vierhebige Reimpaare ) was introduced from the Volkslied. The verse ending is always masculine. Best adapted to a rapidly progressing action, every stanza marks a forward step, portrays a new scene (28, 29, 74).
4. The Sonnet, an Italian verse form, is composed of fourteen iambic lines of five feet each. The rhyme for the first eight lines, called the octave, is always abbaabba; for the last six, called the sestette, the rhyme may be cdcdcd, ccdccd, or cdecde (69 and 77).
5. The Siziliane, likewise Italian, consists of eight iambic lines of five feet each, the rhyme being abababab (135 and 136).
6. The Modified Nibelungen Stanza, an adaptation of the stanza of the Nibelungenlied introduced by Uhland, is a stanza of four verses rhyming in couplets; each verse has six accented syllables with a fixed pause as indicated below in the scansion of the first two lines of 32: