Homeward Bound LXXV
Upon thy snow-white shouldersI lean my head at rest;And secretly I hearkenTo the yearning of thy breast.
In thy heart hussars blue-coatedAre riding and blowing their horn;And my darling will surely desert meWith the earliest streak of morn.
And if thou desert me to-morrow,None the less art thou mine to-day.And within thine arms so lovely,Still doubly blest I stay.
Words in this poem
- morn n.
- The first part of the day; the morning; -- used chiefly in poetry. [OE. morwen, morgen, AS. morgen; akin to D. morgen, OS. morgan, G. morgen, Icel. morginn, morgunn, Sw. morgon, Dan. morgen, Goth. maúrgins. Cf. Morrow, Morning.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Homeward Bound LXXV 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 LXXV, in Poems and Ballads (1881), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #31726, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/heine-poems-ballads/homeward-bound-lxxv.html, id L15400.
Form and metre
Homeward Bound LXXV is 12 lines in 3 stanzas of 4 lines each. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 79%). 84% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 7.7 syllables. 5 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 33% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other poems in iambic 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 -A-A shoulders · restA · hearken · breastA
- 2 -A-A coated · hornA · me · mornA
- 3 -A-A morrow · dayA · lovely · stayA
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 iambic tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Upon thy snow-white shoulders | 7 | ·····/˘ |
| I lean my head at rest; | 6 | ······ |
| And secretly I hearken | 7 | ·/˘˘·/˘ |
| To the yearning of thy breast. | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| In thy heart hussars blue-coated | 8 | ···/˘·/˘ |
| Are riding and blowing their horn; | 8 | ·/˘·/˘·· |
| And my darling will surely desert me | 10 | ··/˘·/˘/˘· |
| With the earliest streak of morn. | 8 | ··/˘˘··· |
| And if thou desert me to-morrow, | 9 | ···/˘··/˘ |
| None the less art thou mine to-day. | 8 | ········ |
| And within thine arms so lovely, | 8 | ······/˘ |
| Still doubly blest I stay. | 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.