Songs to Seraphine II
Over all the quiet sea-shoreShadowing falls the hour of Hesper;Through the clouds the moon is breaking,And I hear the billows whisper.
"Can that man who wanders yonderBe a lover or a dunce?For he seems so sad and merry,Sad and merry both at once."
But the laughing moon looks downward,And she speaks, for she doth know it:"Yes, he is both fool and lover,And, to cap it all, a poet!"
Words in this poem
- shadowing n.
- Shade, or gradation of light and color; shading. Feltham.
- hesper n.
- The evening; Hesperus. [See Hesperian.]
- yonder adv.
- At a distance, but within view. [OE. yonder, ýonder; cf. OD. ginder, Goth. jaindr there. Yond, adv.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Songs to Seraphine II 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, Songs to Seraphine II, in Poems and Ballads (1881), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #31726, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/heine-poems-ballads/songs-to-seraphine-ii.html, id L15417.
Form and metre
Songs to Seraphine II is 12 lines in 3 stanzas of 4 lines each. The metre is trochaic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 86%). 97% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 7.9 syllables. 8 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 17% 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.
- 3 -A-A downward · itA · lover · poetA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Over all the quiet sea-shore | 8 | ····/˘·· |
| Shadowing falls the hour of Hesper; | 9 | /˘˘··/·/˘ |
| Through the clouds the moon is breaking, | 8 | ······/˘ |
| And I hear the billows whisper. | 8 | ····/˘/˘ |
| "Can that man who wanders yonder | 8 | ····/˘/˘ |
| Be a lover or a dunce? | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| For he seems so sad and merry, | 8 | ······/˘ |
| Sad and merry both at once." | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| But the laughing moon looks downward, | 8 | ··/˘··/˘ |
| And she speaks, for she doth know it: | 8 | ········ |
| "Yes, he is both fool and lover, | 8 | ······/˘ |
| And, to cap it all, a poet!" | 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.