Homeward Bound LXXXVI
In Halle, near the market,There stand two mighty lions.Ah, lion-strength of Halle town,How art thou tamed and broken!
In Halle, near the market,There stands a mighty giant,He holds a sword and he never moves,He is petrified with terror.
In Halle, near the market,A stately church is standing,Where the Burschenschaft and the LandsmannschaftHave plenty of room to worship.
Words in this poem
- burschenschaft n.
- In Germany, any of various associations of university students formed (the original one at Jena in 1815) to support liberal ideas, or the organization formed by the affiliation of the local bodies.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Homeward Bound LXXXVI 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 LXXXVI, in Poems and Ballads (1881), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #31726, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/heine-poems-ballads/homeward-bound-lxxxvi.html, id L15411.
Form and metre
Homeward Bound LXXXVI is 12 lines in 3 stanzas of 4 lines each. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 86%). 90% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 7.3 syllables. 9 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 8% 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 --AA market · lions · townA · brokenA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| In Halle, near the market, | 6 | ····/˘ |
| There stand two mighty lions. | 7 | ···/˘/˘ |
| Ah, lion-strength of Halle town, | 7 | ·/˘···· |
| How art thou tamed and broken! | 8 | ····˘·/˘ |
| In Halle, near the market, | 6 | ····/˘ |
| There stands a mighty giant, | 7 | ···/˘/˘ |
| He holds a sword and he never moves, | 8 | ······/· |
| He is petrified with terror. | 8 | ··/˘··/˘ |
| In Halle, near the market, | 6 | ····/˘ |
| A stately church is standing, | 7 | ·/˘··/˘ |
| Where the Burschenschaft and the Landsmannschaft | 10 | ··/˘˘····· |
| Have plenty of room to worship. | 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.