Songs to Seraphine XII
My ship sails forth with sable sails,Far over the savage sea;Thou know'st how heavy is my woe,Yet still thou woundest me.
Thy heart is fickle as the wind,And flits incessantly.My ship sails forth with sable sails,Far over the savage sea.
Words in this poem
- sable n.
- A carnivorous animal of the Weasel family (Mustela zibellina) native of the northern latitudes of Europe, Asia, and America, -- noted for its fine, soft, and valuable fur. [OF. sable, F. zibeline sable (in sense 4), LL. sabellum; cf. D. sabel, Dan. sabel, zobel, Sw. sabel, sobel, G. zobel; all fr. Russ. sóbole.]
- incessantly adv.
- Unceasingly; continually.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Songs to Seraphine XII 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 XII, in Poems and Ballads (1881), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #31726, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/heine-poems-ballads/songs-to-seraphine-xii.html, id L15427.
Form and metre
Songs to Seraphine XII is 8 lines in 2 stanzas of 4 lines each. The metre is common measure, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 91%). 97% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 7.2 syllables. 1 line ends on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending.
See other poems in common measure.
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 sails · seaA · woe · meA
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 common measure. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| My ship sails forth with sable sails, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| Far over the savage sea; | 7 | ····/˘· |
| Thou know'st how heavy is my woe, | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| Yet still thou woundest me. | 6 | ···/˘· |
| Thy heart is fickle as the wind, | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| And flits incessantly. | 6 | ··˘/˘˘ |
| My ship sails forth with sable sails, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| Far over the savage sea. | 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.