Chapter II: On the Comforting of People till they arrive among the Pious
Beware, if the path of the good you select !Do not show in your service a moment's neglect!Feed the partridge, the quail, and the pigeon with care,For some day the griffin may fall to your snare.When Humility's arrow you ev'rywhere cast,You may hope to bring game to your keeping, at last.But one pearl will be found in a number of shells ;On the target, but one, in a hundred shafts, tells.
Words in this poem
- beware v. t.
- To avoid; to take care of; to have a care for.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Chapter II: On the Comforting of People till they arrive among the Pious 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 II: On the Comforting of People till they arrive among the Pious, in The Garden of Fragrance (1882), text of Internet Archive, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/saadi-bostan/2-27.html, id L29584.
Form and metre
Chapter II: On the Comforting of People till they arrive among the Pious is 8 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets. The metre is anapaestic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 96%).
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 AABBCCDD selectA · neglectA · careB · snareB · castC · lastC · shellsD · tellsD
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Beware, if the path of the good you select ! | 11 | ˘/·······˘/ |
| Do not show in your service a moment's neglect! | 12 | ·····/˘·/˘˘/ |
| Feed the partridge, the quail, and the pigeon with care, | 12 | ··/˘····/˘·· |
| For some day the griffin may fall to your snare. | 11 | ····/˘····· |
| When Humility's arrow you ev'rywhere cast, | 12 | ·˘/˘˘/˘····· |
| You may hope to bring game to your keeping, at last. | 12 | ········/˘·· |
| But one pearl will be found in a number of shells ; | 12 | ········/˘·· |
| On the target, but one, in a hundred shafts, tells. | 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.