Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Fâ‘ilâtün Fâ‘ilâtün Fâ‘ilün

Cennet-i vaslından olmaz nâ-ümîd
Tîr-i gamzenle olur her kim şehîd
Tîr-i gamzenden şikâyet eyleyen
‘İşve-i eltâf-ı çeşminden ba‘îd
Câna aldım derd-i çeşmin vakt kim
Söyledi dellâl-ı ‘aşkın men yezîd
Âteş-i ‘aşkın ziyâd oldukca ben
Söylerem hel min mezîd hel min mezîd
Şem‘-veş pervâne-i gönlüm yanar
Tâ ki olmuş pertev-i mihrin pedîd
Sana bir te’sîr kılmaz yohsa kim
Nâr-ı tîzimden hazer eyler hadîd
Müjde ey Mîr Nigârî kim haber
Virdi Selmâdan sabâ-yı hoş-nüvîd

In English

1. He who becomes a martyr by the arrow of your glance does not lose hope of the paradise of union with you.

2. He who complains of the arrow of your glance is far from the coquetry of your eye's kindnesses.

3. When the crier of your love called out "Who bids more?", I bought the pain of your eye with my soul.

4. As the fire of your love grows, I say, "Is there more, is there more?"

5. Ever since the light of the sun of your love appeared, the moth of my heart burns like a candle.

6. Or does (my fire) have no effect on you at all? Yet even iron shrinks from my sharp fire.

7. Good tidings, O Mîr Nigârî, for the morning breeze that brings glad news has brought word from Selmâ.

Literary and Historical Commentary

"Hel min mezîd" in the fourth couplet is taken from verse 30 of the sura Qaf: "On that day We shall say to Hell, 'Are you full?', and it will say, 'Is there more?'" This question, in the verse the word of an insatiable hell, passes in Nigârî's ghazal into the lover's mouth. As the fire of love grows, the lover asks for more. The insatiability of the fire and of the lover are told in the same words; but what hell asks for is torment, what the lover asks for is the fire of love.

In the third couplet the words "men yezîd", who bids more, appear. This is the crier's call at an auction, and a few pages earlier in the divan, in the ghazal "Bir nazar kıl ey sanem", it is also in the mouth of love's crier. Here the lover answers the call at once: he buys the pain of the beloved's eye with his soul. The two Arabic phrases, "men yezîd" and "hel min mezîd", come from the same root, and the two couplets, following one another, complete each other: the price raised in the market and the excess the fire demands.

The sixth couplet rests on a comparison. Iron, "hadîd", shrinks from the lover's sharp fire, yet the fire does not touch the beloved's heart; she is harder than iron. Good news ends the ghazal: the morning breeze has brought word from Selmâ. Selmâ is one of the traditional names for the beloved in Arabic poetry and entered divan poetry by that road, like Leylâ. Saba is the morning wind that carries the beloved's scent and news to the lover.

Bibliography

Online sources