Homeward Bound XXI
Here to her vows I listened,I tread the empty halls,And where her tear-drops glistened,The poisoned serpent crawls.
About this text
Homeward Bound XXI 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 XXI, in Poems and Ballads (1881), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #31726, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/heine-poems-ballads/homeward-bound-xxi.html, id L15348.
Form and metre
Homeward Bound XXI is 4 lines in a single stanza. It rhymes ABAB. The lines average 7.2 syllables. 2 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending.
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 listenedA · hallsB · glistenedA · crawlsB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Here to her vows I listened, | 8 | ·····/˘˘ |
| I tread the empty halls, | 6 | ···/˘· |
| And where her tear-drops glistened, | 8 | ·····/˘˘ |
| The poisoned serpent crawls. | 7 | ·/˘˘/˘· |
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.