Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Ġonce-i laʿlüñle ḫâlüñ vaṣfı olmışdur sözüm
Ey şeh-i mülk-i melâḥat sendedür göñlüm gözüm

In English

1. My speech has become the praise of your rosebud ruby lip and your beauty spot; O king of the realm of beauty, my heart and my eye are with you.

Literary and Historical Commentary

The lover speaks here of his own poetry: all his speech has come down to describing the beloved's lip and beauty spot. The lip is likened to an unopened rosebud and to a red ruby (la'l); the beauty spot, too, is often mentioned in divan poetry as a black dot set near the lip. The rosebud is small and closed, and so is also an image of the small mouth.

The second line brings an everyday idiom into the poem. The phrase "gönlüm gözüm sende", my heart and eye are with you, still describes today being wholly attached to someone and always watching over them. Calling the beloved "şeh-i mülk-i melâhat", king of the realm of beauty, lets the lover present himself as a subject who has surrendered heart and eye to this king. "Sözüm" rhymes with "gözüm"; the plain, flowing delivery of the couplet comes from the natural air of the idiom. The editor of Âşık Çelebi notes that the whole of Ehlî's entry is written as a marginal note in manuscripts B and S; no separate variant reading is recorded for this couplet. It is found only in Âşık Çelebi.

Bibliography

Online sources