Chapter III: Story of the Slave's Remarks
Once my heart, on account of a slave, suffered pain,Who, when sold by his master, remarked, in this strain :"Slaves better than I am will fall to your lot;But a master like you will not eas'ly be got."
About this text
Chapter III: Story of the Slave's Remarks 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 III: Story of the Slave's Remarks, in The Garden of Fragrance (1882), text of Internet Archive, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/saadi-bostan/3-12.html, id L29604.
Form and metre
Chapter III: Story of the Slave's Remarks is 4 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in anapaestic tetrameter.
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 AABB painA · strainA · lotB · gotB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Once my heart, on account of a slave, suffered pain, | 12 | ····˘/···/˘· |
| Who, when sold by his master, remarked, in this strain : | 12 | ·····/˘˘/··· |
| "Slaves better than I am will fall to your lot; | 11 | ·/˘········ |
| But a master like you will not eas'ly be got." | 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.