Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Fâʿilâtün fâʿilâtün fâʿilâtün fâʿilün (metre identified by us)

Göz göñül sîne tehî cân ṭolı taṣvîrüñ senüñ
Gün gibi dördünci ḳat gökdür meger yirüñ senüñ

In English

1. Eye, heart and breast are empty (of you); the soul is full of your image. So your place, it seems, is the fourth heaven, like the sun's.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Latîfî praises this opening couplet as a saying "strung like the Pleiades" and gives it as the first example from the poet who died young; Kınalızâde too quotes only this couplet from Rûhî. The couplet rests on the old picture of the heavens. In the earth-centred order the sky is made of nested spheres, and the sun is in the fourth; Jesus too was believed to be in the fourth heaven. The poet places the beloved in that sphere: she is high like the sun, out of reach.

The first line is built as an enumeration. Eye, heart and breast are "tehî", empty, because the beloved is unseen and far away; the soul, by contrast, is full of her image. This contrast of empty and full is tied to the image of height in the second line: the beloved is not in the eye, the heart or the breast, but stands in a place that lights everything like the sun, and fills the soul with her likeness. In Kınalızâde's text the second line reads "dördinci kat gökde durur yirün senün", your place stands in the fourth heaven; Latîfî's "meger", it seems, conveys the lover's sudden realisation. For the story of his life, early death included, see Rûhî Fâzıl Çelebi (Zenbillizâde).

Bibliography

Online sources