Turkish Literature; Comprising Fables, Belles-lettres, and Sacred Traditions
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Turkish Literature; Comprising Fables, Belles-lettres, and Sacred Traditions
Turkey -- Literary collections; Turkish literature -- Translations into English
Souls are fluttered when the morning breezes through thy tresses stray;
Waving cypresses are wildered when thy motions they survey.
Since with witchcraft thou hast whetted keen the lancet of thy glance,
All my veins are bleeding inward through my longing and dismay.
“Why across thy cheek disordered float thy tresses?” asked I her.
“It is Rūm-Eylī; there high-starred heroes gallop,” did she say.
Thought I, though I spake not: “In thy quarter, through thy
tint and scent,
Wretched and head-giddy, wand’ring, those who hope hope not for stray.”
“Whence the anger in thy glances, O sweet love?” I said; then she:
“Silence! surely if I shed blood, I the ensigns should display.”
Even as thou sighest, ‘Avnī, shower thine eyes tears fast as rain,
Like as follow hard the thunder-roll the floods in dread array.
_‘Avnī._
FRAGMENT OF GAZEL
Torn and pierced my heart has been by thy scorn and tyranny’s blade;
Rent by the scissors of grief for thee is the robe that
my patience arrayed.
Like the mihrāb of the Ka’ba, as shrine where in worship to turn,
Thy ward would an angel take, if thy footprint there he surveyed.
They are pearls, O mine eye! thou sheddest her day-bright face before;
Not a tear is left--these all are dried by the beams by
her cheek displayed.
_‘Avnī._
GAZEL
To obey Fight hard for Allah is my aim and my desire;
’Tis but zeal for Faith, for Islām, that my ardor doth inspire.
Through the grace of Allah, and th’ assistance of the Band Unseen,
Is my earnest hope the Infidels to crush with ruin dire.
On the Saints and on the Prophets surely doth my trust repose;
Through the love of God, to triumph and to conquest I aspire.
What if I with soul and gold strive here to wage the Holy War?
Praise is God’s! ten thousand sighs for battle in my breast suspire.
O Muhammed! through the chosen Ahmed Mukhtār’s glorious aid,
Hope I that my might may triumph over Islām’s foes acquire!
_‘Avnī._
GAZEL
Who pleasure seeks must oftentimes experience sad pain, in sooth;
He must a beggar be who doth desire to win domain, in sooth.
Whene’er I sigh, up rise my tears, they, boiling, fast o’erflow my eyes;
Winds surely must full fiercely blow, with waves to fill
the main, in sooth.
My heart’s domain now thought of thee, now grief for thee, alternate rule;
This realm to wreck and waste to lay those two sublime Kings
strain, in sooth.
Spite zeal and prayers, Truth sure is found within the cup
that’s filled with wine;
So acts of rakes are free from all hypocrisy’s foul stain, in sooth.
O ‘Adenī, rub thou thy face low ’midst the dust that lines her path;
For eyes with blood filled stand in need of tūtyā, health
to gain, in sooth.
_‘Adenī._
FRAGMENT OF GAZEL
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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