Original Persian Text

Metre: Mefā‘īlün Mefā‘īlün Mefā‘īlün Mefā‘īlün

Bahar âmed geh-i ân şud ki bî-dildâr ne-nişînî
Zi-dest-i yâr mey-keş tâ zi-şâh-ı ‘ömr gül-çînî

In English

1. Spring has come; the time has come when you should not sit without your beloved. Drink wine from the beloved's hand, so that you may pick roses from the branch of life. ("To pick roses from the branch of life" means to take one's share of the fair moments that life offers.)

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

This is a Persian matla (opening couplet), a single couplet (beyit) whose two lines rhyme with each other, written in the metre "mefā‘īlün mefā‘īlün mefā‘īlün mefā‘īlün" of the hezec family of aruz (quantitative metre). The metre is not stated in the biographical anthology; it has been deduced from the scansion of the couplet. The rhyme is built on the sound "-înî" in "ne-nişînî" and "gül-çînî". The couplet appears only in the biographical anthology (tezkire) of Kınalızâde Hasan Çelebi, in the entry on Müeyyedzâde, under the heading "Velehû" (also his); the biographer makes no comment on it. No published Turkish translation of the couplet could be found; the rendering here has been made from the Persian text. To whom and when it was written is not known. Since its two lines rhyme, the couplet may be the opening couplet of a Persian ghazal now lost. Âşık Çelebi writes that Müeyyedzâde had Persian "ġazeliyyāt u ḳaṣā'id", ghazals and kasides, and Beyânî that he had "Fârisî kasâ’idi ve latîf gazelleri", Persian kasides and fine ghazals; but none of these ghazals has come down to us complete.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The couplet voices a familiar call tied in divan poetry to the season of spring: spring has come, and this season is not to be spent alone. The first line is a piece of news and the conclusion drawn from it; the coming of spring is the coming of the time when sitting without the beloved is no longer fitting. The second line turns this conclusion into counsel: to drink wine from the beloved's hand is to pick roses from the branch of life. There is a congruence of images (tenasüp) among the words "spring", "şâh" (branch) and "rose". The metaphor (istiare) "branch of life" likens a human life to a branch that will shed its flowers once its season is past; to pick roses, therefore, means to make use of the moment while there is still time.

The thought of the couplet is close to that of some of Müeyyedzâde's other poems preserved in the anthologies. Both the Turkish couplets "İçelüm içelüm şarâb içelüm" and the kıt‘a quoted by Latîfî, which ends with the counsel "Fırṣatı fevt eyleme" (do not let the chance slip by), carry the transience of time and the call to seize the moment. In the form quoted by Hüseyin Hüsâmeddin Yasar, the second line of the Turkish couplet begins "Vakt-i gül geldi gel şarâb içelim" (the season of roses has come, come let us drink wine); this pairing of the rose season with the invitation to wine is seen in the Persian matla as well. The closeness shows that a certain taste, a rind-like manner of speech, comes to the fore in the couplets the biographers chose from Müeyyedzâde.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Online sources