Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Mefâîlün mefâîlün mefâîlün mefâîlün

Severseň ger dilâ bir dilber-i derdân-ı devrân sev
Melâḥat gülşeninde zîb-nevres verd-i ḫandân sev

In English

1. O heart, if you are going to love, love a beauty who is the pearl of the age. In the rose garden of grace, love a newly opened, adorned and smiling rose.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The couplet is the first of a semai written in aruz and fits the pattern "mefâîlün mefâîlün mefâîlün mefâîlün"; the identification of the metre is ours. The redif is "sev" ("love"), and the rhyme is the sound "-ân" in the words "devrân" and "ḫandân". The aruz semai is the form of the folk semai sung in quantitative patterns and was used by minstrels and divan poets alike.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

Here the poet gives advice to his own heart: if it is going to love, let it love the most beautiful. The compound "dilber-i derdân-ı devrân" is given as read in the cönk; the word "derdân" yields no clear sense in this form and is very probably related to "dürdâne" or "dürdân", a single pearl. On this reading the beloved is called "the pearl of the age"; the reading and meaning are ours. In the second line beauty is likened to a rose garden and the beloved to a rose laughing in that garden; "verd-i ḫandân", the laughing rose, is the divan poets' name for a rose in bloom. "Zîb-nevres" combines the senses of adorned and newly grown.

Historical Context

The couplet is taken from the Merzifon Cönkü published by Metin Hakverdioğlu in 2019. Hakverdioğlu acquired this manuscript miscellany from Merzifon for his own library and found that a separate ghazal section of the cönk is devoted to Sabrî's poems. Since the article gives only the first stanza of each poem in the cönk, we cannot see the poem beyond this couplet. Hakverdioğlu notes that the poem appears on page 38 of Orhan Bilgin's 1992 edition of the divan; its place in the cönk is page 77. Because Bilgin's book could not be consulted, the full text cannot be given here. The cönk is thought to have been compiled by a Merzifon poet from Sabrî's circle, most probably Fethî; the inclusion of the poem in this compilation shows that Sabrî's verses were still read in Merzifon after his death. For the poet's life and his other poems see the article Eyüb Sabrî.

Bibliography

Online sources