Chapter VIII: Story of the Wretched Man and the Ass
A man left behind on the road, weeping, cried :"Who more wretched than I in this plain can be spied?""Oh void of discretion !" a burdened ass spoke,"How long will you Heaven's oppression provoke?Go tender your thanks, since you ride not a beast,That you are not an ass under people, at least!"
Words in this poem
- discretion n.
- Disjunction; separation. Mede. [F. discrétion, L. discretio separation, difference, discernment, fr. discernere, discretum. See Discreet, Discern.]
- spoke n.
- The radius or ray of a wheel; one of the small bars which are inserted in the hub, or nave, and which serve to support the rim or felly. [OE. spoke, spake, AS, spaca; akin to D. speek, LG. speke, OHG. speihha, G. speiche. sq. root170. Cf. Spike a nail.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Chapter VIII: Story of the Wretched Man and the Ass 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 VIII: Story of the Wretched Man and the Ass, in The Garden of Fragrance (1882), text of Internet Archive, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/saadi-bostan/8-12.html, id L29730.
Form and metre
Chapter VIII: Story of the Wretched Man and the Ass 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 criedA · spiedA · spokeB · provokeB · beastC · leastC
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 man left behind on the road, weeping, cried : | 11 | ········/˘· |
| "Who more wretched than I in this plain can be spied?" | 12 | ··/˘········ |
| "Oh void of discretion !" a burdened ass spoke, | 11 | ···˘/˘·/˘·· |
| "How long will you Heaven's oppression provoke? | 11 | ····/˘˘/˘˘/ |
| Go tender your thanks, since you ride not a beast, | 11 | ·/˘········ |
| That you are not an ass under people, at least!" | 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.