Homeward Bound LXXXVII
Dusky summer-eve declinethOver wood and verdant meadow,Golden moon in azure heavens,Wafting fragrance, softly shineth.
By the brook-side chirps the cricket,Something stirs within the water,And the wanderer hears a rustling,Hears a breathing past the thicket.
In the streamlet, white and slender,All alone the nymph is bathing,Beautiful her arms and shouldersShimmer in the moonbeams' splendor.
Words in this poem
- streamlet n.
- A small stream; a rivulet; a rill.
- shimmer v. i.
- To shine with a tremulous or intermittent light; to shine faintly; to gleam; to glisten; to glimmer. [OE. schimeren, AS. scimerian; akin to scimian, sciman, to glitter, D. schemeren, G. schimmern, Dan. skimre, Sw. skimra, AS. scima a light, brightness, Icel. ski]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Homeward Bound LXXXVII 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 LXXXVII, in Poems and Ballads (1881), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #31726, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/heine-poems-ballads/homeward-bound-lxxxvii.html, id L15412.
Form and metre
Homeward Bound LXXXVII is 12 lines in 3 stanzas of 4 lines each. The metre is trochaic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 95%). 95% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 8.1 syllables. 11 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 17% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
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.
- 2 A--A cricketA · water · rustling · thicketA
- 3 A--A slenderA · bathing · shoulders · splendorA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Dusky summer-eve declineth | 8 | /˘/˘·˘/˘ |
| Over wood and verdant meadow, | 8 | ····/˘/· |
| Golden moon in azure heavens, | 8 | /˘··/˘/˘ |
| Wafting fragrance, softly shineth. | 8 | /˘/˘/˘/˘ |
| By the brook-side chirps the cricket, | 8 | ······/˘ |
| Something stirs within the water, | 8 | /˘····/˘ |
| And the wanderer hears a rustling, | 9 | ··/˘˘··/˘ |
| Hears a breathing past the thicket. | 8 | ··/˘··/˘ |
| In the streamlet, white and slender, | 8 | ··/˘··/˘ |
| All alone the nymph is bathing, | 8 | ·˘/···/˘ |
| Beautiful her arms and shoulders | 8 | /˘˘···/˘ |
| Shimmer in the moonbeams' splendor. | 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.