Original Persian Text

Metre: fā‘ilātün fā‘ilātün fā‘ilün

Bī-gül-i rūyet çi ḫīzed ez-bahār
Ger heme ‘ālem buved yek lāle-zār
Bī-şeker-güftār-ı to n’āyed be-gūş
Ger hezārān mī-şeved ṣūret-hezār
Dest-i kūteh dāred ez-dāmān-ı to
Ez-çi mī-lerzed ‘aceb dest-i çenār
Her gül āteş-pāre’ī bāşed be-men
Ger ne-bāşed der-gülistān rūy-ı yār
Bā vücūd-ı pertev-i rūyeş Münīr
Şod zemistān bih merā ez-ṣad bahār

In English

1. Without your rose face, what comes of spring, even if the whole world were a single tulip garden.

2. Without your sugar-sweet speech, no sound pleases the ear, even if thousands take on the form of nightingales. ("Hezār", in its dictionary sense, means both a thousand and the nightingale; "hezārān" means thousands.)

3. The plane tree's hand is too short to reach the hem of your robe; I wonder whether that is why it trembles. ("Dest-i kūteh", a short hand, expresses not being able to reach. The leaf of the plane tree is likened to an open palm.)

4. If the beloved's face is not in the rose garden, every rose there becomes for me a piece of fire.

5. O Münîr, while the radiance of his face is there, winter has become better for me than a hundred springs.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The poem is a five-couplet ghazal (gazel) written in Persian; in the edition it is the seventy-eighth of the Persian ghazals (fg 78). The metre is "fâ‘ilâtün fâ‘ilâtün fâ‘ilün". The ghazal has no refrain (redif) and does not appear in Ersoy's list of refrains. The rhyme is the sound "-ār": bahār, lāle-zār, hezār, çenār, yār, bahār. Ersoy counts this ghazal among his examples of kafiye-i müreddefe (rhyme preceded by a long vowel). The poem is found in the Vatican (VT 80a) and Vienna (VY 63b) manuscripts. To whom and when it was written is not known.

The ghazal is written in the same metre and with the same "-ār" rhyme as fg 77, which immediately precedes it in the divan; both poems open with spring.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The main idea of the ghazal is that without the beloved, spring and the garden carry no meaning. This idea is stated openly in the opening couplet and confirmed from the other side in the pen-name couplet (mahlas): if the beloved's face is absent, it means nothing that the whole world be a tulip garden; if the beloved's face is present, even winter is better than a hundred springs. The repetition of the rhyme "spring" in the first and fifth couplets ties the beginning and end of the ghazal together. The contrast between winter and spring gives the pen-name couplet the character of a sharp concluding sentence.

In the second couplet a pun (cinas) is built on the word "hezār". The word expresses both the number thousand and the nightingale; "hezārān" (thousands) and "hezār" (nightingale) in the rhyme stand side by side. Even if thousands of nightingales sing, without the beloved's sugar-sweet speech no sound pleases the ear. There is a congruence of images (tenasüp) among sugar, speech and ear.

The third couplet carries the finest conceit of the ghazal. The leaf of the plane tree is like a five-fingered hand and trembles in the wind. The poet finds a poetic cause for this trembling: the plane tree's hand is too short to reach the hem of the beloved's robe, and so it trembles. Setting aside the real cause of a natural event and tying it to an imaginary one is the figure of fanciful aetiology (hüsn-i talil). The phrase "dest-i kūteh" (short hand) is at the same time an idiom expressing the inability to reach, to attain; "stretching out one's hand to the hem" also recalls taking refuge with someone, asking something of him. There is a congruence of images among hand, hem and trembling.

In the fourth couplet every rose in the garden without the beloved is a piece of fire. The redness of the rose is likened to fire, and the flower that is expected to give joy burns the lover. The likeness between rose and fire shows that in the absence of love even beauty turns to pain.

Bibliography

Online sources