Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: mefâîlün mefâîlün mefâîlün mefâîlün (hezec; the second line, as printed, does not fit the pattern exactly)

Selâmet bâğına işret içün basduñ kadem cânâ
Medîd olmadı zevküm ‘âkıbet vakt-i hazân ol

In English

1. O beloved, you set foot in the garden of peace to make merry; (but) my joy did not last long, in the end the season of autumn (came).

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The couplet's source is a tezkire written some two centuries after Mehmed II: according to the information Doğan gives, it was taken from the Tezkire of Rızâ, a biography of seventeenth-century poets, and recorded on page 80 of Saffet Sıtkı's 1944 printing by the Ahmet Halit bookshop. It is not in the Millet manuscript, and so the attribution is not as firm as the older records.

In the text of the edition the second line ends with the words "... 'âkıbet vakt-i hazân ol". Doğan's prose rendering understands this ending as "in the end the season of autumn arrived"; that is, a word such as "oldı" (became, came) at the end of the line is assumed. In its printed form the line looks incomplete both in sense and in terms of the hezec pattern; on this page the text has been left as in the edition, and the rendering follows Doğan's understanding. Since the source itself could not be consulted, the original form of the line remains uncertain.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The couplet rests on a contrast of seasons. The beloved has set foot in the "selâmet bâğı", the garden of peace, to make merry; this is the moment of spring and union. But the lover's joy has not been "medîd", long-lasting, and in the end autumn has come. In divan poetry autumn is the season of separation and fading; the couplet fits the separation that follows a brief happiness into a single contrast of spring and autumn.

Bibliography

  • Fâtih Sultan Mehmed (Avnî), Fâtih Dîvânı ve Şerhi / Dīwān of Sultan Mehmed II with Commentary, ed. Muhammet Nur Doğan, English trans. Michael D. Sheridan, 3rd ed., Istanbul: Türkiye Yazma Eserler Kurumu Başkanlığı, 2023, poem 83, p. 557 (not in Millet 305; from the Tezkire of Rızâ, Saffet Sıtkı's edition (Ahmet Halit Kitabevi, 1944), p. 80). https://ekitap.yek.gov.tr/urun/fatih-divani-ve-serhi--ucuncu-baski-_794.aspx

Online sources