Original Ottoman Turkish Text

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

Hâtıra geldi yine câm-ı lezîz ey sâkî
Kanı peymâne-i gül-fâm-ı lezîz ey sâkî
Bir ayağ-ıla beni server-i mestân eyle
Dolanam başına ey nâm-ı lezîz ey sâkî

In English

1. O cupbearer, the delicious cup has come to mind again; where is that rose-coloured, delicious goblet, O cupbearer?

2. With one cup make me the chief of the drunken; O cupbearer of delicious name, let me circle round your head.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Its refrain holds the word "lezîz", delicious, and the quatrain is the first of the cupbearer rubais placed after the ghazals in dâl. Written in Arabic letters the word ends in zâl (ذ); the next section of the divan is given to this letter. The quatrain thus closes the dâl section while carrying ahead the sound of the zâl section. In the quatrain that follows at once, the comparative form of the same word, "elezz", more delicious, is used; the two quatrains seem to list the degrees of one adjective.

In these four lines delight is given to three things: the cup, the rose-coloured wine and at last the cupbearer's name. That the name is delicious says that even speaking it gives a taste; in divan poetry naming the beloved is imagined as sugar in the mouth. "Bir ayağ", one cup, in the second couplet again rests on the same word serving for cup and foot. A single cup is enough to make the lover "server-i mestân", chief of the drunken. "Dolanam başına", let me circle round your head, is an expression of everyday speech that appears in many places in the divan where the cupbearer is entreated, and here it ends the quatrain with a word of intimacy.

Bibliography

Online sources