Homeward Bound LXXXVIII
Night enfolds these foreign meadows,Sick heart, weary limbs caressing.Ah, thy light athwart the shadows,Moon, is like a quiet blessing!
Gentle moon, thy mild beams banishGloomy terrors where they hover.All my woes dissolve and vanish,And mine eyes with dew brim over.
Words in this poem
- hover n.
- A cover; a shelter; a protection. Carew. C. Kingsley. [Etymol. doubtful.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Homeward Bound LXXXVIII 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 LXXXVIII, in Poems and Ballads (1881), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #31726, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/heine-poems-ballads/homeward-bound-lxxxviii.html, id L15413.
Form and metre
Homeward Bound LXXXVIII is 8 lines in 2 stanzas of 4 lines each. The metre is trochaic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 95%). 100% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 8.0 syllables. 5 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 12% 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.
- 1 ABAB meadowsA · caressingB · shadowsA · blessingB
- 2 A-A- banishA · hover · vanishA · over
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Night enfolds these foreign meadows, | 8 | ·˘/·/˘/· |
| Sick heart, weary limbs caressing. | 8 | ··/˘·˘/˘ |
| Ah, thy light athwart the shadows, | 8 | ···˘/·/· |
| Moon, is like a quiet blessing! | 8 | ····/˘/˘ |
| Gentle moon, thy mild beams banish | 8 | /˘····/˘ |
| Gloomy terrors where they hover. | 8 | /˘/˘··/˘ |
| All my woes dissolve and vanish, | 8 | ···˘/·/˘ |
| And mine eyes with dew brim over. | 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.