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:
Ὦ τέκνα͵ Καδμου τοῦ πάλαι νέα τροϕὴ
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 —∪, called trochees). Thus, in Greek, οἱ γέροντες οἱ παλαιοὶ μεμΦὄμεσθα τῇ πόλει—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