Song
Stay, stay at home, my heart, and rest;Home-keeping hearts are happiest,For those that wander they know not whereAre full of trouble and full of care;To stay at home is best.
Weary and homesick and distressed,They wander east, they wander west,And are baffled and beaten and blown aboutBy the winds of the wilderness of doubt;To stay at home is best.
Then stay at home, my heart, and rest;The bird is safest in its nest;O'er all that flutter their wings and flyA hawk is hovering in the sky;To stay at home is best.
Words in this poem
- homesick a.
- Pining for home; in a nostalgic condition.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Song is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Project Gutenberg ebook #1365; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Song, in The Complete Poetical Works (1839–1882), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #1365, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/longfellow-poems/song-4.html, id L17793.
Form and metre
Song is 15 lines in 3 stanzas of 5 lines each. Every stanza rhymes AABBA, the Limerick. The metre is iambic tetrameter, 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 8.3 syllables. 2 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 20% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other limericks, other poems in iambic 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 AABBA restA · happiestA · whereB · careB · bestA
- 2 AABBA distressedA · westA · aboutB · doubtB · bestA
- 3 AABBA restA · nestA · flyB · skyB · bestA
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 iambic tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Stay, stay at home, my heart, and rest; | 8 | ········ |
| Home-keeping hearts are happiest, | 8 | ·/˘··/˘˘ |
| For those that wander they know not where | 9 | ···/˘···· |
| Are full of trouble and full of care; | 9 | ···/˘···· |
| To stay at home is best. | 6 | ······ |
| Weary and homesick and distressed, | 8 | /˘·/··˘/ |
| They wander east, they wander west, | 8 | ·/˘··/˘· |
| And are baffled and beaten and blown about | 11 | ··/˘·/˘···· |
| By the winds of the wilderness of doubt; | 9 | ·····/˘·· |
| To stay at home is best. | 6 | ······ |
| Then stay at home, my heart, and rest; | 8 | ········ |
| The bird is safest in its nest; | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| O'er all that flutter their wings and fly | 9 | ···/˘···· |
| A hawk is hovering in the sky; | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| To stay at home is best. | 6 | ······ |
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.