Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Vakti var devr-i gülün eldeki câm-ı meyi gör
Âdemi bülbül eden sâgar-ı peyderpeyi gör
Vasf-ı gül savt-ı hezârı kim okur kim dinler
Kadeh-i bâde-i gülgûn u sadâ-yı neyi gör

In English

1. It is the very time of the rose season; look at the cup of wine in hand, look at the goblets coming one after another that turn a man into a nightingale.

2. Who reads the praise of the rose, who listens to the nightingale's voice? Look instead at the cup of rose-coloured wine and the sound of the reed flute.

Literary and Historical Commentary

These two couplets, an invitation to a spring gathering, call the reader in every line to look at something new through the refrain "-yi gör" (look at). The first word of the opening couplet, "devr", can be drawn towards two meanings: the season, the age of the rose, but also the passing of the cup from hand to hand in the gathering. The word "peyderpey" (one after another) strengthens this second meaning. As the cups go round one after another, a man turns into a nightingale, that is, he grows elated, sings, warbles.

The second couplet uses the motif of the rose and the nightingale from the opposite direction. The praise of the rose and the lament of the nightingale, the most worked theme of divan poetry, are for the poet things no one reads or listens to any more; what is to be seen is the rose-coloured wine in the cup and the sound of the reed flute. The rose passes into the colour of the wine, the nightingale's voice into the voice of the flute. This small exchange of places refreshes an old image with the concrete objects of the gathering. These couplets from the pen of a statesman are among the pieces Hüsameddin gives with the note "Ve lehû" and must be the first two couplets of a ghazal; nothing more of it was recorded. What is known of Sıdkı's divan and career is gathered on the page Sıdkı Mustafa Pasha.

Bibliography

Online sources