Original Ottoman Turkish Text

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

Dem-i ‘işretdi bu eyyâm-ı bahâr ey sâkî
Gel meyhâneyi al eyle nisâr ey sâkî
Mey ü mahbûb ile bu faslı müzeyyen eyle
Kim budur eşref-i mevsim-i çehâr ey sâkî

In English

1. O cupbearer, these spring days were the time for revelry; come, take the tavern and scatter (its wine) as largesse, O cupbearer. (The sense of the second line is uncertain.)

2. Adorn this season with wine and the beloved; for this is the noblest of the four seasons, O cupbearer.

Literary and Historical Commentary

The quatrain is given to spring, which it counts the noblest of the four seasons. "Mevsim-i çehâr", the four seasons, was in the old natural philosophy an order thought of together with the four elements and the four temperaments; spring was held to be the mildest and liveliest time of that order. In divan poetry spring is the season when the rose opens, the nightingale sings and gatherings move into the gardens, the most fitting time to ask the cupbearer for wine. "Dem-i ‘işret", the time of revelry, is the hour when the drinking gathering is set up.

In the second line of the first couplet the cupbearer is told to take the tavern and make it "nisâr". Nisar is the coins, sweets or flowers scattered over people's heads at weddings and feasts. The line can be understood as the cupbearer buying the whole tavern and scattering its wine to everyone; the edition does not explain the phrase. The rhyme words "bahâr, nisâr, çehâr" end in re, the letter of the next section. The edition gives the quatrain no heading of its own; its metre and refrain are the same as those of the earlier cupbearer rubais.

Bibliography

Online sources