Original Ottoman Turkish Text
Metre: Mefʿūlü mefāʿīlü mefāʿīlün faʿ (fāʿ) and Mefʿūlü mefāʿīlü mefāʿīlü feʿūl
Esdikce ṣabā gösterir evrāḳ u ġuṣūn
Bir nāzlı temāyül, ḥarekāt-i mevzūn
Yapraḳlar öpüşdükce olur pür-ḫalecān
Dallar arasında ṭolaşır şevḳ-i derūn
In English
1. As the morning breeze blows, the leaves and branches show a coy bending, measured movements.
2. As the leaves kiss, they fill with trembling; among the branches the longing within goes wandering.
Literary and Historical Commentary
This quatrain, which shares its opening with the previous one, turns the scene of trees in the morning breeze into a scene of love. The branches show "nazlı bir temâyül", a coy bending; "harekât-ı mevzûn", measured movements, recall the steps of a dance. In the second couplet the leaves kiss and fill with a trembling at every kiss; a longing from within wanders among the branches.
Read together, the two quatrains show the poet drawing two different moods from the same observation. In the first the tree in the wind recites a poem and lulls passion to sleep like a cradle; in the second the tree is coy like a beloved and its leaves kiss. The first gives peace, the second excitement. Such paired quatrains in the divan show that Cûdî used the rubai as a mould for thought and also as a field for trying out an image from different angles.
Bibliography
- Havva Tok Yıldız, Merzifonlu İbrâhîm Cûdî Dîvânı (İnceleme-Metin-Sözlük) [1b-43a], Master's thesis, Ondokuz Mayıs University, Samsun 2017, p. 107 (poem no. 111; manuscript fol. 37a). http://libra.omu.edu.tr/tezler/116853.pdf
Online sources
