Homeward Bound XXXIX
Three holy kings from the land of the WestGo asking whoso passes,"Where is the road to Bethlehem,Ye gentle lads and lasses?"
But neither young nor old can tell.The kings fare patient onward,They follow a golden star o'erhead,That bright and kind shines downward.
The star stands still o'er Joseph's house,Thither the pilgrims bringing;The oxen low, the Infant cries,The three wise kings are singing.
Words in this poem
- whoso pron.
- Whosoever. Piers Plowman.
- bethlehem n.
- A hospital for lunatics; -- corrupted into bedlam. [Heb. b house of food; b house + lekhem food, lakham to eat. Formerly the name of a hospital for the insane, in London, which had been the priory of St. Mary of ]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Homeward Bound XXXIX 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 XXXIX, in Poems and Ballads (1881), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #31726, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/heine-poems-ballads/homeward-bound-xxxix.html, id L15365.
Form and metre
Homeward Bound XXXIX is 12 lines in 3 stanzas of 4 lines each. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 90%). 93% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 7.8 syllables. 6 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 -A-A west · passesA · bethlehem · lassesA
- 3 -A-A house · bringingA · cries · singingA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Three holy kings from the land of the West | 10 | ·/˘······· |
| Go asking whoso passes, | 7 | ·/˘/˘/˘ |
| "Where is the road to Bethlehem, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| Ye gentle lads and lasses?" | 7 | ·/˘··/˘ |
| But neither young nor old can tell. | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| The kings fare patient onward, | 7 | ···/˘/˘ |
| They follow a golden star o'erhead, | 9 | ·/˘·/˘··· |
| That bright and kind shines downward. | 7 | ·····/˘ |
| The star stands still o'er Joseph's house, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| Thither the pilgrims bringing; | 7 | /˘·/˘/˘ |
| The oxen low, the Infant cries, | 8 | ·/˘··/˘· |
| The three wise kings are singing. | 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.