Chapter VII: Story of Sahab's Advice to Sadi

Saadi (1210–1291), translated by G. S. Davie · 1882

anapaestic tetrameter · rhyming couplets · 4 lines · from The Garden of Fragrance

My enlightened old tutor, Sahab, to me gaveTwo bits of advice, on the face of the wave !The first was, " Conceited of self do not be!"The second was, " Evil in others, don't see !"

Words in this poem

conceited a.
Endowed with fancy or imagination.

Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.

About this text

Chapter VII: Story of Sahab's Advice to Sadi 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 VII: Story of Sahab's Advice to Sadi, in The Garden of Fragrance (1882), text of Internet Archive, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/saadi-bostan/7-12.html, id L29695.

Form and metre

Chapter VII: Story of Sahab's Advice to Sadi 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. 1 AABB gaveA · waveA · beB · seeB
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.

LineSyl.Stress
My enlightened old tutor, Sahab, to me gave12·˘/˘·/˘·····
Two bits of advice, on the face of the wave !11···˘/······
The first was, " Conceited of self do not be!"11···˘/˘·····
The second was, " Evil in others, don't see !"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.

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