Homeward Bound XXXVIII
Mortal, sneer not at the devil;Life's a short and narrow way,And perdition everlastingIs no error of the day.
Mortal, pay thy debts precisely,Life's a long and weary way;And to-morrow thou must borrow,As thou borrow'dst yesterday.
Words in this poem
- perdition n.
- Entire loss; utter destruction; ruin; esp., the utter loss of the soul, or of final happiness in a future state; future misery or eternal death. [F., fr. L. perditio, fr. perdere, perditum, to ruin, to lose; per (cf. Skr. para away) + -dere (only in comp.) to put; akin to Gr. do. See Do.]
- borrow v. t.
- To receive from another as a loan, with the implied or expressed intention of returning the identical article or its equivalent in kind; -- the opposite of lend. [OE. borwen, AS. borgian, fr. borg, borh, pledge; akin to D. borg, G. borg; prob. fr. root of AS. beorgan to protect. Borough.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Homeward Bound XXXVIII 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 XXXVIII, in Poems and Ballads (1881), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #31726, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/heine-poems-ballads/homeward-bound-xxxviii.html, id L15364.
Form and metre
Homeward Bound XXXVIII is 8 lines in 2 stanzas of 4 lines each. The metre is trochaic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 94%). 100% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 7.5 syllables. 3 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 -A-A devil · wayA · everlasting · dayA
- 2 -A-A precisely · wayA · borrow · yesterdayA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Mortal, sneer not at the devil; | 8 | /˘····/˘ |
| Life's a short and narrow way, | 7 | ····/˘· |
| And perdition everlasting | 8 | ·˘/˘·˘/˘ |
| Is no error of the day. | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| Mortal, pay thy debts precisely, | 8 | /˘···˘/˘ |
| Life's a long and weary way; | 7 | ····/˘· |
| And to-morrow thou must borrow, | 8 | ··/˘··/· |
| As thou borrow'dst yesterday. | 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.