Chapter V: Story of the Father Chastising his Son
With a stick an old man beat his son on the head ;"I am guiltless, oh father ! don't beat me ! " he said ;At the harshness of men I can weep before you ;But if you treat me harshly what then can I do?"The possessor of wisdom to God sends his cry,But does not complain of the Maker on high.
Words in this poem
- guiltless a.
- Free from guilt; innocent.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Chapter V: Story of the Father Chastising his Son 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 V: Story of the Father Chastising his Son, in The Garden of Fragrance (1882), text of Internet Archive, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/saadi-bostan/5-8.html, id L29659.
Form and metre
Chapter V: Story of the Father Chastising his Son 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 92%).
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 headA · saidA · youB · doB · cryC · highC
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 |
|---|---|---|
| With a stick an old man beat his son on the head ; | 12 | ············ |
| "I am guiltless, oh father ! don't beat me ! " he said ; | 12 | ··/˘·/˘····· |
| At the harshness of men I can weep before you ; | 12 | ··/˘········ |
| But if you treat me harshly what then can I do?" | 12 | ·····/˘····· |
| The possessor of wisdom to God sends his cry, | 12 | ·˘/˘·/˘····· |
| But does not complain of the Maker on high. | 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.