The Garden of Fragrance
Saadi's book of stories and counsel on justice, kindness, love, humility and prayer in ten chapters, in G. S. Davie's rhymed English couplets of 1882.
What this poem is
The Bustan (Persian: بوستان, romanized: Būstān, lit. 'Orchard') is a book of poetry by the Persian poet Saadi, completed in 1257 CE and dedicated to the Salghurid Atabeg Sa'd I or Sa'd II. Bustan is considered one of Saadi's two major works.
It was Saadi's first work. The book contains the fruits of Saadi's long experience and his judgements upon life, and is illustrated by a vast collection of anecdotes. It includes accounts of Saadi's travels and his analysis of human psychology. He often mentions his accounts with fervour and advice similar to Aesop's Fables. The book has ten chapters regarding the issues of ethics and training; namely, justice, mercy, love, humility, contentment, devotions, education, gratitude, repentance, and praying.
The Bustan is among the 100 greatest books of all time according to Bokklubben World Library. It is composed in mathnawī style (rhyming couplets), and has been translated into English. In 1688, the Bustan was translated into Dutch by Daniel Havart.
Adapted from the Wikipedia article “Bustan (book)” (revision 1363797561), used under CC BY-SA 4.0. Laurel's own notes and measurements are not from Wikipedia.
Measured across the book
Across its 8,022 lines, 80% of stressed syllables fall on the beat (95% interval 79% to 80%). Alliteration runs at 0.95 times what shuffling the words would give (0.37 observed against 0.39 expected). 5% of the lines have a feminine ending.
Baselines and intervals are described in the methods.
Contents
About this text
Public domain. Text 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. Free to read, print, copy and reuse.