Helena
Thou hast invoked me from my grave,And through thy magic spellHast quickened me with fierce desire,This flame thou canst not quell.
Oh press thy lips against my lips,Divine is mortal breath;I drink thy very soul from thee.Insatiable is death.
Words in this poem
- hast
- , 2d pers. sing. pres. of. Fave, contr. of havest.
- quell v. t.
- To take the life of; to kill. [OE. quellen to kill, AS. cwellan, causative of cwelan to die; akin to OHG. quellen to torment, Icel. kvelja. See Quail to cower.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Helena is in the public domain. This text is taken from Poems and Ballads, Project Gutenberg ebook #31726, the Emma Lazarus translation; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Heinrich Heine, Helena, in Poems and Ballads (1881), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #31726, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/heine-poems-ballads/helena.html, id L15445.
Form and metre
Helena is 8 lines in 2 stanzas of 4 lines each. The metre is common measure, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 94%). 97% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 7.1 syllables. 1 line ends on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 12% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other poems in common measure.
Measured by Laurel's pipeline, not copied from a handbook: how stress and metre are counted, how rhyme is lettered, how a drifted rhyme is found. Where the dictionary cannot confirm a rhyme the letter is withheld, not guessed.
Rhyme words, stanza by stanza
The word that ends each line, lettered by the rhyme it makes; a dash is a line whose rhyme the dictionary could not confirm.
- 1 -A-A grave · spellA · desire · quellA
- 2 -A-A lips · breathA · thee · deathA
Scansion, line by line
Each line with its syllable count and the stresses the words themselves fix: / stressed, ˘ unstressed, · a syllable the word leaves free and the metre decides. Read against common measure. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Thou hast invoked me from my grave, | 8 | ··˘/···· |
| And through thy magic spell | 6 | ···/˘· |
| Hast quickened me with fierce desire, | 9 | ·/˘···˘/˘ |
| This flame thou canst not quell. | 6 | ······ |
| Oh press thy lips against my lips, | 8 | ········ |
| Divine is mortal breath; | 6 | ˘/·/˘· |
| I drink thy very soul from thee. | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| Insatiable is death. | 6 | ˘/˘˘·· |
The reader shows the same poem with its rhymes coloured and a stress row above each line, the notes beside their stanzas, and any word's definition on a tap; the analysis page takes the whole book apart. How every part of this site was made.