Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Fâʿilâtün feʿilâtün feʿilâtün feʿilün (metre identified by us)

Bilmeyüp dâyîresin ḫaddüne öykündi ḳamer
Yüzine kir getürür âḫiri bir gün lekeler

In English

1. Not knowing its bounds (its circle), the moon tried to rival your cheek; in the end, one day, spots will soil its face (the moon's spots are the price of that presumption).

Literary and Historical Commentary

The explanation given for the moon's spots hangs on the double meaning of two words. "Hadd" means cheek, but also limit; "dâyire" is both the halo round the moon and a person's bounds, his own sphere. The moon, "not knowing its circle", that is, overstepping its bounds, has tried to rival the beloved's cheek; "ḫaddüne öykündi" reads at once as "it emulated your cheek" and "it reached for your limit". In divan poetry the spots on the moon's face are often explained as a flaw or a wound. Rûhî turns them into a scene of punishment: the moon that sets out to compete with the beloved will sooner or later have its face soiled. The idiom "to bring dirt on someone's face" also means to shame him, to make him lose face.

Latîfî quotes the couplet alone with "velehû" and does not say which ghazal he took it from. The metre is the common form of remel with "feʿilâtün". The moon's rivalry with the beloved appears in Rûhî's other couplet as well: in the couplet beginning "Mihr ile meh öykünse yüzüñe", sun and moon again imitate the beloved's face, but there the poet excuses rather than rebukes them. Read together, the two couplets show the young poet trying the same motif in two different ways. The question of who Rûhî was is discussed in Rûhî Fâzıl Çelebi (Zenbillizâde).

Bibliography

Online sources