Homeward Bound LIX
Lovers' vows, wherefrom thou turnest,Bound me closely to thy heart,Now my jest grows sober earnest,I am pierced by mine own dart.
Laughingly thou stand'st before me--If thou leave me in my need,All the powers of hell come o'er me,I shall shoot myself indeed.
Words in this poem
- jest n.
- A deed; an action; a gest. [OE. jeste, geste, deed, action, story, tale, OF. geste, LL. gesta, orig., exploits, neut. pl. from L. gestus, p. p. of gerere to bear, carry, accomplish, perfor]
- laughingly adv.
- With laughter or merriment.
- shall v. i.
- To owe; to be under obligation for. [OE. shal, schal, imp. sholde, scholde, AS. scal, sceal, I am obliged, imp. scolde, sceolde, inf. sculan; akin to OS. skulan, pres. skal, imp. skolda, D. zullen,]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Homeward Bound LIX 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, Homeward Bound LIX, in Poems and Ballads (1881), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #31726, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/heine-poems-ballads/homeward-bound-lix.html, id L15384.
Form and metre
Homeward Bound LIX is 8 lines in 2 stanzas of 4 lines each. Every stanza rhymes ABAB. The metre is trochaic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 87%). 90% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 7.8 syllables. 2 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending.
See other poems in trochaic tetrameter.
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 ABAB turnestA · heartB · earnestA · dartB
- 2 ABAB meA · needB · meA · indeedB
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 trochaic tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Lovers' vows, wherefrom thou turnest, | 9 | /˘·····/˘ |
| Bound me closely to thy heart, | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| Now my jest grows sober earnest, | 8 | ····/˘/˘ |
| I am pierced by mine own dart. | 7 | ······· |
| Laughingly thou stand'st before me-- | 8 | /˘˘····· |
| If thou leave me in my need, | 7 | ······· |
| All the powers of hell come o'er me, | 8 | ··/····· |
| I shall shoot myself indeed. | 7 | ····/˘/ |
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.