Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Fâ‘ilâtün Fâ‘ilâtün Fâ‘ilâtün Fâ‘ilün

Olmasaydı mihr bir mâh ile elbet zâr subh
Ben gibi çekmezdi her bir lahza bin âzâr subh
Kayd-ı sevdâsın çeker bir meh-veşin ‘âlemde kim
Zâhir eyler sînede bin dâg-ı mihr-vâr subh
Derd-mend-i hasret-i dîdârdır kim her seher
Hâr-ı hicrân-ıla gül tek yakasın yırtar subh
Gün gibi güller açılmış bu ne gafletdir diyü
Âh-ı gayretle kılur bülbülleri bîdâr subh
‘Âşık-ı ser-bâzdır hûrşîde cân teslim ider
Muhlisâne eyler ol sâdıklığın izhâr subh
Muntazır olmaz tulû‘-ı şemse manzûr eyleyen
Pertev-i mihr-i cemâlin Ahmed-i Muhtâr subh
Sen de bir hûrşîde ey dil cân virürsün ‘âkıbet
Her seher kanlar döküp ölsen eger hem-kâr subh
Devlet ey Seyyid Nigârî bulmuş ol kim derd-nâk
Fikr-i dil-dâr ile oynar şâm tâ dîdâr subh

In English

1. Had the morning no love (mihr, which also means sun) for a moon-faced one, surely it would not, like me, moan and suffer a thousand hurts every moment.

2. The morning bears the chain of passion for a moon-like beauty in the world; for it shows upon its breast a thousand brands like suns.

3. The morning is sick with longing to see the face; for every dawn, like the rose, it tears its collar on the thorn of separation.

4. Saying "the roses have opened like the sun, what heedlessness is this?", the morning wakes the nightingales with a sigh of zeal.

5. The morning is a lover who stakes his head and surrenders his soul to the sun; it shows its truthfulness sincerely. ("Subh-ı sâdık", the true morning, means daybreak.)

6. The morning that gazes on the light of the sun of the beauty of Ahmed the Chosen (the Prophet Muhammad) does not wait for the sun to rise. (The edition gives no gloss; the sense is approximate.)

7. O heart, you too will in the end give your soul to a sun; working alongside the morning, you would shed blood every dawn and die. (The couplet has been understood approximately.)

8. O Seyyid Nigârî, the sufferer who plays with the thought of the beloved from evening until the face appears at morning has found good fortune.

Literary and Historical Commentary

In this ghazal the lover is the morning. Nigârî describes daybreak as a sufferer smitten with a moon-faced beauty and ties each image of the dawn to a state of the lover. In the first couplet the word "mihr" works in both its senses, sun and love. Had the morning no mihr for a moon, that is, were the morning not in love with the moon, it would not keep moaning; and the hour when moon and sun meet in the sky is indeed the dawn. In the second couplet the "thousand brands" on the morning's breast are the wounds lovers burn into their chests for the beloved; the redness rising on the eastern horizon is likened to these wounds.

The third couplet uses an old image. In divan poetry the breaking of dawn is told as the morning tearing its collar; the white line opening in the middle of darkness is a torn collar. The rose too tears its collar as it opens. Morning, rose and lover thus meet in a single gesture. In the fourth couplet the morning wakes the nightingales, for sleeping while the roses are open is heedlessness.

Behind the word "sâdıklık", truthfulness, in the fifth couplet lies a term. The light between night and day is of two kinds: first the "subh-ı kâzib", the false dawn, which appears and fades; then the "subh-ı sâdık", the true dawn, which truly breaks. When the poet says the morning shows its truthfulness he names this second dawn and sees it as a lover who has staked his head and surrendered his soul to the sun.

In the sixth couplet the Prophet Muhammad enters the world of the ghazal: "Ahmed-i Muhtâr", Ahmed the Chosen. The morning that has seen the sun of his beauty does not wait for the sun in the sky to rise. Nigârî's love for the Prophet and his family runs through his divan; here the name appearing in the middle of a love ghazal ties the light of dawn to the light of the Prophet. The ghazal owes its place in the hâ section to its refrain, whose last letter is "hâ" (ح).

Bibliography

Online sources