Chapter I: Song
Last night I had pleasure in life for a space,For that moon-visaged maiden was in my embrace.On perceiving that sleep had bewildered her head," Oh slumber transported, beloved one !" I said ;"Wash slumber away from your eyes, for a while!Like the nightingale sing ! like the rose-blossom smile !Oh plague of the world ! why thus, sleeping, recline?Come and bring with you some of last night's ruby wine !"Bewildered through sleep, she beheld me and spake :—"You call me a trouble, and say, 'Keep awake!'"In the days of the monarch of luminous mind,None again will the nuisance of wakefulness find.
About this text
Chapter I: Song is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Garden of Fragrance: being a complete translation of the Bostan of Sadi from the original Persian into English verse, by G. S. Davie (London: Kegan Paul, Trench and Co., 1882), Internet Archive, the G. S. Davie 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: Saadi, Chapter I: Song, in The Garden of Fragrance (1882), text of Internet Archive, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/saadi-bostan/1-16.html, id L29521.
Form and metre
Chapter I: Song is 12 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets. The metre is anapaestic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 92%).
See other poems in rhyming couplets, other poems in anapaestic 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 AABBCCDDEEFF spaceA · embraceA · headB · saidB · whileC · smileC · reclineD · wineD · spakeE · awakeE · mindF · findF
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 anapaestic tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Last night I had pleasure in life for a space, | 11 | ····/˘····· |
| For that moon-visaged maiden was in my embrace. | 12 | ···/˘/˘···˘/ |
| On perceiving that sleep had bewildered her head, | 12 | ·˘/˘···˘/˘·· |
| " Oh slumber transported, beloved one !" I said ; | 11 | ·/˘˘/˘˘/··· |
| "Wash slumber away from your eyes, for a while! | 11 | ·/˘˘/······ |
| Like the nightingale sing ! like the rose-blossom smile ! | 11 | ··/˘····/˘· |
| Oh plague of the world ! why thus, sleeping, recline? | 11 | ·······/˘˘/ |
| Come and bring with you some of last night's ruby wine !" | 12 | ·········/˘· |
| Bewildered through sleep, she beheld me and spake :— | 11 | ˘/˘···˘/··· |
| "You call me a trouble, and say, 'Keep awake!'" | 11 | ····/˘···˘/ |
| In the days of the monarch of luminous mind, | 11 | ·····/··/˘· |
| None again will the nuisance of wakefulness find. | 13 | ·˘/··/˘······ |
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.