Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Mefʿûlü fâʿilâtün mefʿûlü fâʿilâtün (metre identified by us)

Her-câyî dil-rübânuñ ʿâşıḳına vefâsı
Hafta ortasına varmaz ay aḳçesine beñzer

In English

1. The faithfulness of a fickle heart-stealer to her lover is like a month's pay in silver: it does not last to the middle of the week.

Literary and Historical Commentary

A familiar complaint of divan poetry, the unreliability of the fickle beauty's word, is put here through a comparison taken from the market and the pay register. "Ay akçesi" is the wage paid at the start of the month; in the Ottoman world the livelihood of household retainers and of the madrasa circle depended largely on such payments. Money received at the start of the month is quickly spent and does not last to the middle of the week. So too with the faithfulness of the fickle beauty: it is there on the day it arrives and is gone within a few days. The word "ay" also recalls the moon in the sky and links, through the motif of the "hercâyî" beauty who goes everywhere, to the moon imagery of Rûhî's other couplets, but here the primary sense is the calendar month.

The couplet bears traces of the daily life of a poet who lived in the madrasa circle in his youth and died while still a student. Sehî gives it as the second example of Rûhî's poems; which ghazal it belongs to is not known. The lines end in "vefâsı" and "beñzer", so the couplet is not an opening verse. That it follows the couplets for the friend bound for Mecca suggests that Sehî had a small collection of Rûhî's poems to hand; but no record confirms it. The poet's biography, Rûhî Fâzıl Çelebi (Zenbillizâde), sets out the debate on his year and place of birth.

Bibliography

Online sources