Chapter III: Story of the Glowworm
Perhaps you have seen that in garden and swamp,The glow-worm shines brightly at night, like a lamp.One inquired, thus, " Oh moth, lighting night with your ray!Why is it you do not appear in the day?"Observe what the earth-nurtured, fire-giving fly,From its head of enlightenment, said, in reply :"In the plains day and night I am present, always ;But never apparent before the sun's rays !"
Words in this poem
- enlightenment n.
- Act of enlightening, or the state of being enlightened or instructed.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Chapter III: Story of the Glowworm 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 Glowworm, in The Garden of Fragrance (1882), text of Internet Archive, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/saadi-bostan/3-22.html, id L29614.
Form and metre
Chapter III: Story of the Glowworm is 8 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets, 75% of the lines. The metre is anapaestic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 84%).
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 swamp · lamp · rayA · dayA · flyB · replyB · alwaysC · raysC
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Perhaps you have seen that in garden and swamp, | 11 | ˘/·····/˘·· |
| The glow-worm shines brightly at night, like a lamp. | 11 | ····/˘····· |
| One inquired, thus, " Oh moth, lighting night with your ray! | 12 | ·˘/···/˘···· |
| Why is it you do not appear in the day?" | 11 | ······˘/··· |
| Observe what the earth-nurtured, fire-giving fly, | 11 | ˘/···/˘//˘· |
| From its head of enlightenment, said, in reply : | 11 | ····˘/˘··˘/ |
| "In the plains day and night I am present, always ; | 12 | ········/˘/· |
| But never apparent before the sun's rays !" | 11 | ·/˘˘/˘····· |
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.