Chapter IV: On Humility
From the dust, the Pure God to you entity gave ;Be humble ! resembling the dust, then, oh, slave !Shun pride and oppression, and sordid desire!Out of dust they created you, do not be fire !When the terrible Fire raised its arrogant crown,The Earth cast its body in helplessness down.When Fire haughtiness showed ; Earth submissiveness, then,From That they made demons, from This they made men!
Words in this poem
- sordid a.
- Filthy; foul; dirty. [L. sordidus, fr. sordere to be filthy or dirty; probably akin to E. swart: cf. F. sordide. See Swart, a.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Chapter IV: On Humility 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 IV: On Humility, in The Garden of Fragrance (1882), text of Internet Archive, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/saadi-bostan/4-1.html, id L29622.
Form and metre
Chapter IV: On Humility 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 82%).
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 gaveA · slaveA · desireB · fireB · crownC · downC · thenD · menD
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 |
|---|---|---|
| From the dust, the Pure God to you entity gave ; | 12 | ········/˘˘· |
| Be humble ! resembling the dust, then, oh, slave ! | 12 | ·/˘˘/˘˘····· |
| Shun pride and oppression, and sordid desire! | 12 | ···˘/˘·/˘˘/˘ |
| Out of dust they created you, do not be fire ! | 13 | ····˘/˘····/˘ |
| When the terrible Fire raised its arrogant crown, | 13 | ··/˘˘/˘··/˘˘· |
| The Earth cast its body in helplessness down. | 11 | ····/˘·/˘˘· |
| When Fire haughtiness showed ; Earth submissiveness, then, | 14 | ·/˘/˘˘········ |
| From That they made demons, from This they made men! | 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.