Tartar Song I
Heaven visits man with days of sadness,Embitters oft his nights with tears;Blest is the Fakir who with gladnessViews Mecca in declining years.
Words in this poem
- sadness n.
- Heaviness; firmness.
- fakir n.
- An Oriental religious ascetic or begging monk. [Ar. faqir poor.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Tartar Song I is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Bakchesarian Fountain and Other Poems, Project Gutenberg ebook #8192; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Alexander Pushkin, Tartar Song I, in The Bakchesarian Fountain and Other Poems (1849), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #8192, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/pushkin-bakchesarian/tartar-song-i.html, id L25555.
Form and metre
Tartar Song I is 4 lines in a single stanza. It rhymes ABAB.
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 ABAB sadnessA · tearsB · gladnessA · yearsB
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. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Heaven visits man with days of sadness, | 9 | //˘····/˘ |
| Embitters oft his nights with tears; | 8 | ˘/˘····· |
| Blest is the Fakir who with gladness | 9 | ···/˘··/˘ |
| Views Mecca in declining years. | 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.