Original Ottoman Turkish Text

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

Aldı müştâkları hayret ü mât ey sâkî
Bes lebinden kerem it âb-ı hayât ey sâkî
Bâde-i nâbdan özge bize teskîn virmez
Yaramaz kârımıza âb-ı Fırât ey sâkî

In English

1. O cupbearer, wonder and checkmate have seized those who long; so be generous with the water of life from your lips.

2. O cupbearer, nothing but pure wine can calm us; the water of the Euphrates is of no use to our case.

Literary and Historical Commentary

In the edition this quatrain is not headed "Rubâî", but its place and form show that it is of the same kind as the divan's other cupbearer rubais. Here the be ghazals end, and immediately after begins the "Harfü't-tâ", the ghazals ending in the letter te. The rhyme of the quatrain is the "-ât" sound in "mât, hayât, Fırât"; the rubai thus announces in advance the sound of the next letter. The same arrangement was seen between elif and be. Pervane Bayram notes that Nigârî placed two cupbearer rubais at the end of each letter's ghazals; this quatrain and the one that follows are the pair for the letter be.

The Euphrates of the second couplet brings a heavy memory into the quatrain. At Karbala Husayn and those with him were left without water on the bank of the Euphrates; the thirsty of Karbala are recalled several times in Nigârî's divan. In this quatrain the poet says the water of the Euphrates is of no use to him: only the water of life on the cupbearer's lips and pure wine can quench his thirst. The Euphrates stands here, as one of the most famous waters of the world, for worldly water that cannot quench the thirst of love; whether the Karbala association is intended cannot be known.

"Hayret ü mât", wonder and checkmate, in the first couplet winks at the language of chess: a checkmated player cannot move, and a lover struck with wonder cannot stir either. Only the water of life, the water of immortality, can release this paralysis. Bilgin assigns the quatrain to the ramal pattern "fe‘ilâtün fe‘ilâtün fe‘ilâtün fe‘ilün"; its refrain is "ey sâkî".

Bibliography

Online sources