Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Yolda eyler bizi görmezlenüp eflâke nazar
Gitdi ol şâh-ı kerem eylemedi hâke nazar

In English

1. That king of generosity, on the road, ignores us and looks at the heavens; he went on and did not look at the dust (at us, lowly as dust).

Literary and Historical Commentary

A brief encounter on a road is all the material of the couplet. The beloved is called "şâh-ı kerem", king of generosity, and the title is the couplet's bitter irony: the beloved thought generous has ignored the lover on the road and walked on with head raised to the sky. The opposition of sky and earth (eflâk and hâk) is the couplet's frame. Fixing one's eyes on the heavens conveys pride, not looking at the dust conveys contempt for the lover brought as low as dust.

Three sources give the couplet in three forms. The text of Kınalızâde followed here and Hüsameddin's are almost the same. In Beyânî, however, the first line reads "Yolda aylarını görmezlenüp" and the second "Gitdi ol mâh-ı cihân itmedi ben hâke nazar". In this reading the beloved is a "moon of the world" bright enough to ignore the moons of the sky, and the lover openly calls himself "ben hâk", I who am dust. Which form came from the poet's hand cannot be determined from these three witnesses; Beyânî's text seems tighter in sense. Beyânî gives this couplet first in the short entry introducing Ehlî; in Kınalızâde it is the sixth of nine pieces.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Online sources