Songs to Seraphine XV
The Runenstein juts in the sea,I sit here with my dreams,The billows wander foamingly;Winds pipe, the sea-mew screams.
Oh I have loved full many a lass,And many a worthy fellow,Where have they gone? The shrill winds pass,And wandering foams the billow.
Words in this poem
- foamingly adv.
- With foam; frothily.
- lass n.
- A youth woman; a girl; a sweetheart. [OE. lasse; prob. of Celtic origin; cf. W. llodes girl, fem. of llawd lad. (Lad a youth.]
- billow n.
- A great wave or surge of the sea or other water, caused usually by violent wind. [Cf. Icel. bylgja billow, Dan. bölge, Sw. bölja; akin to MHG. bulge billow, bag, and to E. bulge. See Bulge.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Songs to Seraphine XV 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 XV, in Poems and Ballads (1881), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #31726, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/heine-poems-ballads/songs-to-seraphine-xv.html, id L15430.
Form and metre
Songs to Seraphine XV is 8 lines in 2 stanzas of 4 lines each. The metre is common measure, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 82%). 89% 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.
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 sea · dreamsA · foamingly · screamsA
- 2 A-A- lassA · fellow · passA · billow
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 |
|---|---|---|
| The Runenstein juts in the sea, | 8 | ········ |
| I sit here with my dreams, | 6 | ······ |
| The billows wander foamingly; | 8 | ·/˘/˘/˘˘ |
| Winds pipe, the sea-mew screams. | 6 | ······ |
| Oh I have loved full many a lass, | 8 | ·····/·· |
| And many a worthy fellow, | 8 | ·/˘·/˘/˘ |
| Where have they gone? The shrill winds pass, | 8 | ········ |
| And wandering foams the billow. | 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.