Chapter VI: Story of the Usurer and his Son
From a staircase a usurer tumbled, one day ;I have heard that his soul at the time passed away.His son for a little lamented him sore,And then joined his frolicsome friends, as before.He saw him one night in a dream and thus said :" At the judgment and questioning, how have you sped?""The story, oh son! do not ask me to tell !From the staircase I tumbled, at once, into Hell."
Words in this poem
- usurer n.
- One who lends money and takes interest for it; a money lender. [F. usurier, LL. usurarius. See Usury, and cf. Usurarious.]
- lamented a.
- Mourned for; bewailed.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Chapter VI: Story of the Usurer and 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 VI: Story of the Usurer and his Son, in The Garden of Fragrance (1882), text of Internet Archive, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/saadi-bostan/6-12.html, id L29679.
Form and metre
Chapter VI: Story of the Usurer and his Son 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 dayA · awayA · soreB · beforeB · saidC · spedC · tellD · hellD
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 a staircase a usurer tumbled, one day ; | 12 | ··/··/˘˘/˘·· |
| I have heard that his soul at the time passed away. | 12 | ··········˘/ |
| His son for a little lamented him sore, | 11 | ····/˘˘/˘·· |
| And then joined his frolicsome friends, as before. | 12 | ···˘·/˘˘···· |
| He saw him one night in a dream and thus said : | 11 | ··········· |
| " At the judgment and questioning, how have you sped?" | 12 | ··/˘·/˘˘···· |
| "The story, oh son! do not ask me to tell ! | 11 | ·/˘········ |
| From the staircase I tumbled, at once, into Hell." | 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.