Chapter VII: Story of the Husband and Wife
A youth on account of the shrew he had wed,In an aged man's presence lamented and said :"A load at the hand of this impudent foeI bear, like the mill-stone fixed, helpless, below.""Put up with her harshness, oh sir !" he replied ;"No man is ashamed if his patience be tried !Oh scapegrace ! at night you as upper stone sway,Why not serve as the under one, during the day?When you've culled from a rose-bush of pleasure a deal,It is right that the pain of its thorns you should feel.When you're always partaking of fruit from a tree ;When you taste of the prickles, long-suffering be !"
Words in this poem
- lamented a.
- Mourned for; bewailed.
- scapegrace n.
- A graceless, unprincipled person; one who is wild and reckless.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Chapter VII: Story of the Husband and Wife 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 the Husband and Wife, in The Garden of Fragrance (1882), text of Internet Archive, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/saadi-bostan/7-26.html, id L29709.
Form and metre
Chapter VII: Story of the Husband and Wife is 12 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets. The metre is anapaestic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 94%).
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 AABBCCDDEEFF wedA · saidA · foeB · belowB · repliedC · triedC · swayD · dayD · dealE · feelE · treeF · beF
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 |
|---|---|---|
| A youth on account of the shrew he had wed, | 11 | ···˘/······ |
| In an aged man's presence lamented and said : | 11 | ····/˘˘/˘·· |
| "A load at the hand of this impudent foe | 11 | ·······/˘˘· |
| I bear, like the mill-stone fixed, helpless, below." | 11 | ·······/˘·· |
| "Put up with her harshness, oh sir !" he replied ; | 11 | ····/˘···˘/ |
| "No man is ashamed if his patience be tried ! | 11 | ···˘/··/˘·· |
| Oh scapegrace ! at night you as upper stone sway, | 11 | ·/˘····/˘·· |
| Why not serve as the under one, during the day? | 12 | ········/˘·· |
| When you've culled from a rose-bush of pleasure a deal, | 12 | ········/˘·· |
| It is right that the pain of its thorns you should feel. | 12 | ············ |
| When you're always partaking of fruit from a tree ; | 12 | ··/·˘/˘····· |
| When you taste of the prickles, long-suffering be !" | 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.