Homeward Bound LXXX
Ye could not understand mine ireNor I the tales that ye did tell,But when we met within the mire,We knew each other very well.
About this text
Homeward Bound LXXX 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 LXXX, in Poems and Ballads (1881), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #31726, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/heine-poems-ballads/homeward-bound-lxxx.html, id L15405.
Form and metre
Homeward Bound LXXX is 4 lines in a single stanza. It rhymes ABAB. The lines average 8.0 syllables.
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 ireA · tellB · mireA · wellB
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. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Ye could not understand mine ire | 8 | ····˘/·· |
| Nor I the tales that ye did tell, | 8 | ········ |
| But when we met within the mire, | 8 | ········ |
| We knew each other very well. | 8 | ···/˘/˘· |
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.