Chapter I: Remarks on the Responsibility of Rulers
Take care, lest you carelessly slumber! for sleepIs forbid to the chief, with the tribe in his keep.Take care, that the grief of your subjects you share !And fear, lest the vengeance of Time you should bear !Advice that, devoid of self-int'rest, one sees,Is like drugs that are bitter, repelling disease.
About this text
Chapter I: Remarks on the Responsibility of Rulers 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: Remarks on the Responsibility of Rulers, in The Garden of Fragrance (1882), text of Internet Archive, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/saadi-bostan/1-32.html, id L29537.
Form and metre
Chapter I: Remarks on the Responsibility of Rulers is 6 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets. The metre is anapaestic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 97%).
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 AABBCC sleepA · keepA · shareB · bearB · seesC · diseaseC
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Take care, lest you carelessly slumber! for sleep | 11 | ····/˘˘/˘·· |
| Is forbid to the chief, with the tribe in his keep. | 12 | ·˘/········· |
| Take care, that the grief of your subjects you share ! | 11 | ·······/˘·· |
| And fear, lest the vengeance of Time you should bear ! | 11 | ····/˘····· |
| Advice that, devoid of self-int'rest, one sees, | 11 | ˘/·˘/······ |
| Is like drugs that are bitter, repelling disease. | 12 | ·····/˘˘/˘˘/ |
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.