Homeward Bound XXXIV
"Did she ne'er express compassionFor thy tender situation?Could'st thou never in her glancesRead thy love's reciprocation?
"Could'st thou ne'er surprise the spiritIn her bright eyes unawares?Yet thou surely art no donkey,Dearest friend, in these affairs!"
They loved one another, but neitherConfessed a word thereof.They met with coldest glances,Though pining away with love.
At last they parted; their spiritsMet but in visions rare.They are long since dead and buried,Though scarcely themselves aware.
Words in this poem
- reciprocation n.
- The act of reciprocating; interchange of acts; a mutual giving and returning; as, the reciprocation of kindness. [L. reciprocatio: cf. F. reciprocation.]
- donkey n.
- An ass; or (less frequently) a mule. [Prob. dun, in allusion to the color of the animal + a dim. termination.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Homeward Bound XXXIV 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 XXXIV, in Poems and Ballads (1881), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #31726, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/heine-poems-ballads/homeward-bound-xxxiv.html, id L15361.
Form and metre
Homeward Bound XXXIV is 16 lines in 4 stanzas of 4 lines each. The metre is trochaic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 85%). 89% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 7.4 syllables. 9 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 31% 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 AA-A compassionA · situationA · glances · reciprocationA
- 2 -A-A spirit · unawaresA · donkey · affairsA
- 3 -A-A neither · thereofA · glances · loveA
- 4 -A-A spirits · rareA · buried · awareA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| "Did she ne'er express compassion | 8 | ···˘/˘/˘ |
| For thy tender situation? | 8 | ··/˘·˘/˘ |
| Could'st thou never in her glances | 8 | ··/˘··/˘ |
| Read thy love's reciprocation? | 5 | ····· |
| "Could'st thou ne'er surprise the spirit | 8 | ···˘/·/˘ |
| In her bright eyes unawares? | 7 | ·····˘/ |
| Yet thou surely art no donkey, | 8 | ··/˘··/˘ |
| Dearest friend, in these affairs!" | 7 | /˘···˘/ |
| They loved one another, but neither | 9 | ···˘/˘·/˘ |
| Confessed a word thereof. | 7 | ˘/˘···· |
| They met with coldest glances, | 7 | ···/˘/˘ |
| Though pining away with love. | 7 | ·/˘˘/·· |
| At last they parted; their spirits | 8 | ···/˘·/˘ |
| Met but in visions rare. | 6 | ···/˘· |
| They are long since dead and buried, | 8 | ······/˘ |
| Though scarcely themselves aware. | 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.