Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Mefʿûlü fâʿilâtü mefâʿîlü fâʿilün (metre identified by us)

Tâ seyre çıḳdı ġayr ile serv-i revânumuz
Andan beri oturmadı yirine cânumuz

In English

1. Ever since our swaying cypress (the beloved) went out walking with the rival, our soul has not settled back in its place.

Literary and Historical Commentary

The Walking Cypress and the Unsettled Soul

Walking and sitting are the two verbs this couplet sets against each other. In divan poetry the tall, swaying beloved is called a "serv-i revân", a walking cypress. When the cypress leaves its place and goes out walking with the rival, the lover's soul can no longer stay in its own; the idiom "the soul does not sit in its place", which expresses unease, answers the movement of the cypress. The tree walks and the soul cannot sit: the couplet is complete in this single image.

Refrain or Opening Couplet

Hüsameddin presents this couplet as the refrain verse of Refîkî's famous tercî'-bend on the times, the couplet repeated at the end of each stanza. Sehî, Latîfî and Beyânî, however, give that poem's refrain as "Bu zamân bir ʿaceb zamân oldı / Yaḫşılıḳlar ḳamu yamân oldı", and Kınalızâde records the same couplet with "cihân" for "zamân". Latîfî and Kınalızâde quote "Tâ seyre çıḳdı" as a separate example with no connection to the complaint about the age. Both lines of the couplet rhyme, which suggests the opening verse of a ghazal, and its metre differs from that of the tercî'-bend. Hüsameddin seems to have merged two separate pieces of information here. The tercî'-bend itself is given a separate page in this category, while what the anthologies say of the poet is gathered under Refîkî Ali Çelebi (İbrîzâde).

Bibliography

Primary sources

Official sources

Online sources