Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Mefâ‘îlün Mefâ‘îlün Fe‘ûlün

Yüzün ey ay-veş göz âyesidir
Hatın levha-i dil-pîrâyesidir
Sözün ser-ceşme-i deryâ-yı hayvân
Lebin şehd-âbesi cân mâyesidir
Çeker erbâb-ı dil çeşmin belâsın
Ki ol derd ehlinin sermâyesidir
Ser-i kûyunda mesken eylemiş dil
Zehî mesken ki miskîn dâyesidir
Dilâ hûrşîd-veş baht-ı bülendin
Meger bir meh-veşin hem-sâyesidir
Açık bî-tâcdır başım serimde
Olan bir serv-kaddin sâyesidir
Tevellüd eylemiş tâ ki hüsünden
Nigârî tıfl-ı ‘aşkın dâyesidir

In English

1. O moon-like one, your face is a sign for the eye; your down is a tablet that adorns the heart.

2. Your speech is the fountainhead of the sea of life; the honey syrup of your lip is the leaven of the soul.

3. The people of the heart endure the affliction of your eye, for it is the capital of the people of pain.

4. The heart has made its home at the head of your street; what a home, which is nurse to the poor.

5. O heart, your fortune, lofty as the sun, turns out to share the shade of a moon-faced one.

6. My head is bare and crownless; what is over my head is the shade of one whose stature is a cypress.

7. Since the child of love was born of your beauty, Nigârî has been its nurse.

Literary and Historical Commentary

The rhyme words set the texture of this short ghazal: âye, pîrâye, mâye, sermâye, dâye, sâye. All end in the same sound "-âye" and join with the refrain "-sidir". The poet uses this sound to move across the fields of meaning of his words. "Âye" is a verse and a sign, "pîrâye" adornment, "mâye" leaven and essence, "sermâye" capital, "dâye" a nurse or wet-nurse, "sâye" shade. One sound brings together words as far apart as scripture and the market, the household and the garden.

One of these words, "dâye", in the final couplet becomes a family scene. A child has been born of the beloved's beauty: love. The nurse of this child, who feeds it and raises it, is Nigârî. If beauty is the mother, love is her child and the poet its nurse. The same word is used in the fourth couplet as well: the beloved's street is nurse to the poor, a place that feeds penniless lovers. The repetition of the rhyme word belongs to the edition's text and serves two different scenes in two couplets.

The fifth and sixth couplets are built on shade. Fortune that looks lofty as the sun is in truth the "hem-sâye" of a moon-faced one, a neighbour sharing the same shade. In the sixth the poet says his head is bare, that he has no crown; the only thing above his head is the shade of the cypress-statured beloved. For a crownless head this shade is worth more than a king's crown. If one recalls the belief that whoever the Huma bird's shadow falls on will become king, this shade too makes the lover a sultan in his own world.

Bibliography

Online sources