Twilight
On the wan shore of the seaLonely I sat with troubled thoughts.The sun dropped lower, and castGlowing red streaks on the water.And the white wide waves,Crowding in with the tide,Foamed and rustled, nearer and nearer,With a strange rustling, a whispering, a hissing,A laughter, a murmur, a sighing, a seething,And amidst all these a mysterious lullaby.I seemed to hear long-past traditions,Lovely old-time fairy-tales,Which as a boy I had heard,From the neighbor's children,When on summer evenings we had nestledOn the stone steps of the porch.With little eager hearts,And wistful cunning eyes,Whilst the grown maidensSat opposite at their windowsNear their sweet-smelling flower pots,With their rosy faces,Smiling and beaming in the moonlight.
Words in this poem
- amidst prep.
- In the midst or middle of; surrounded or encompassed by; among. [OE. amidde, amiddes, on midden, AS. on middan, in the middle, fr. midde the middle. The s is an adverbial ending, originally marking the genitive; the t is a la]
- lullaby n.
- A song to quiet babes or lull them to sleep; that which quiets. [From Lull, v. t.]
- wistful a.
- Longing; wishful; desirous. [For wishful; perhaps influenced by wistly, which is probably corrupted from OE. wisly certainly (from Icel. viss certain, akin to E. wit). See Wish.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Twilight 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, Twilight, in Poems and Ballads (1881), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #31726, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/heine-poems-ballads/twilight.html, id L15448.
Form and metre
Twilight is 23 lines in a single verse paragraph. It is unrhymed, as far as the pronouncing dictionary can tell. The metre is trochaic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 74%). 88% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 7.8 syllables. 10 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 22% 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-A- sea · thoughts · cast · water · waves · tide · nearer · hissing · seething · lullaby · traditions · tales · heard · children · nestled · porch · hearts · eyesA · maidens · windowsA · pots · facesA · moonlight
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 |
|---|---|---|
| On the wan shore of the sea | 7 | ······· |
| Lonely I sat with troubled thoughts. | 8 | /˘···/˘· |
| The sun dropped lower, and cast | 8 | ···˘/˘·· |
| Glowing red streaks on the water. | 8 | /˘····/˘ |
| And the white wide waves, | 5 | ····· |
| Crowding in with the tide, | 6 | /˘···· |
| Foamed and rustled, nearer and nearer, | 9 | ··/˘/˘·/˘ |
| With a strange rustling, a whispering, a hissing, | 11 | ···/˘·/˘·/˘ |
| A laughter, a murmur, a sighing, a seething, | 12 | ·/˘·/˘·/˘·/˘ |
| And amidst all these a mysterious lullaby. | 12 | ·˘/···˘/˘/˘· |
| I seemed to hear long-past traditions, | 9 | ······˘/˘ |
| Lovely old-time fairy-tales, | 7 | /˘··/˘· |
| Which as a boy I had heard, | 7 | ······· |
| From the neighbor's children, | 6 | ··/˘/˘ |
| When on summer evenings we had nestled | 10 | ··/˘/˘··/˘ |
| On the stone steps of the porch. | 7 | ······· |
| With little eager hearts, | 6 | ·/˘/˘· |
| And wistful cunning eyes, | 6 | ·/˘/˘· |
| Whilst the grown maidens | 5 | ···/˘ |
| Sat opposite at their windows | 8 | ·/˘˘··/˘ |
| Near their sweet-smelling flower pots, | 8 | ···/˘/˘· |
| With their rosy faces, | 6 | ··/˘/˘ |
| Smiling and beaming in the moonlight. | 9 | /˘·/˘··/· |
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.