Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Bâğ-ı devletde kad-i mevzûnu serv-i serbülend
Bositân-ı ma’rifetde kilk-i nahl-i miyvedâr.
Külçe-i mihri felek saymazdı hergîz zerreye
Olsa iksîr-i gubâr-ı dergehinden hissedâr
Zihn-i sâfî âleme âyîne-i gîtî-nümâ
Câm-ı adli bâis-i ref-i humâr-ı inkisâr

In English

1. In the garden of state his well-proportioned stature is a cypress with its head held high; in the orchard of learning his pen is a fruit-bearing sapling.

2. Had the sky received a share of the elixir in the dust of his threshold, it would never have counted the golden ingot of the sun as worth even a mote.

3. His pure mind is a world-revealing mirror to the world; the cup of his justice is the cause that lifts the hangover of brokenness.

Literary and Historical Commentary

The three couplets are taken from the section of praise in a kaside (qasida), and all of them list the qualities of the same person. Hüsameddin gives them under the heading "Ez-Kasâid", quoted from Mehmed Şeyhî's Vekâyiu'l-fuzalâ, and says in a footnote that they come from the kasides Sıdkı presented to Kaptan Yusuf Pasha. According to Hüsameddin's account, Sıdkı returned to İstanbul in 1053 (1644) after the execution of Kara Mustafa Pasha, became the secretary of Yusuf Pasha, the "musâhib-i şehriyârî" or sultan's close companion, by presenting him a kaside, and soon afterwards became chief scribe for the second time. Whether these couplets come from that kaside is not certain, but the footnote and the account point to the same man; in that case the poem is a presentation with which a scribe rebuilt his career.

The first couplet separates two fields of praise: the patron is a cypress in the garden of state and a fruit-bearing sapling in the orchard of learning. Mentioning "kilk" (pen) together with "nahl" (sapling) rests on thinking of the reed pen as a plant, and says that the patron's writing bears fruit. The second couplet turns to the language of alchemy. The elixir is the substance believed to turn copper into gold; the dust of a threshold is the old symbol of rubbing one's face at a great man's door. For the poet the dust of that threshold is so precious that if the sky had a share of it, it would hold the sun's golden ingot as nothing. In the third couplet two legendary objects come side by side: "âyîne-i gîtî-nümâ", the mirror that shows the world, and "câm", the cup. The patron's mind is likened to a mirror that shows everything, his justice to a cup that lifts the hangover of brokenness. No other couplet of the kaside is quoted. Sıdkı's rise in the chancery and his approach to Yusuf Pasha are told in his biography, Sıdkı Mustafa Pasha.

Bibliography

Online sources