Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Fe‘ilâtün Fe‘ilâtün Fe‘ilâtün Fe‘ilün

Çeng ü âheng ile vir bezme revâc ey sâkî
Tâ ola bâde-i meyhâne revâc ey sâkî
Kâr idüp cânıma gam la‘l-i lebinden ayru
Eylegil derdime la‘linle ilâc ey sâkî

In English

1. O cupbearer, bring life to the gathering with harp and melody, so that the tavern's wine may be in demand.

2. O cupbearer, parted from your ruby lips, grief has seized my soul; cure my pain with your lips.

Literary and Historical Commentary

In the first couplet of the quatrain "revâc" ends both lines: first the gathering is to be given revâc, liveliness and favour, then the tavern's wine is to be in revâc, in demand. Rhyming the same word in two lines is something a divan poet strictly bound by the rules would avoid; such freedoms appear from time to time in Nigârî's poetry, and Hüsameddin's mention of expressions in his poetry "that do not conform to the rules" may concern places like this too. Here the repetition stresses the bond between the liveliness of the gathering and the demand for wine: if the instruments play, the wine is drunk.

The second couplet turns the cupbearer into a physician. Grief has seized the soul in separation from the beloved's lips, and the cure is those lips again. "La‘l" in divan poetry is the name both of the red precious stone and of the beloved's lips; it is also known that in old medicine the ruby was believed to be good for the heart. The lips being a medicine ties these two senses together.

The second quatrain of the pair also rests on the letter cim with the rhymes revâc and ilâc; turn the page and the cim ghazals begin.

Bibliography

Online sources