Song of Solomon

8* If only you were the same as a brother of mine,

one that had sucked my mother’s breasts!

Finding you in the street, I would kiss you;

they would not despise me either.

2** I would lead you, would bring you to my mother’s house,

to the chamber of her who gave me birth.

I would give you a drink of perfumed wine,

of my pomegranate-wine.

3* His left arm clasps my head

and his right embraces me.

4 I adjure you, daughters of Jerusalem,

why should you wake love or rouse it up

till it so please?

5* Who is this coming up from the wilderness

leaning on her truelove?

Under the apple-tree I waked you up;

it was there your mother bore the birth-pains for you,

there she bore the birth-pains, brought you to birth.

6** Lay me like a seal over your heart,

like a seal on your arm;

For love is violent as death,

jealousy hard as the grave;

Its flashes are flashes of fire,

Jehovah’s flame-throwing.

7* Much water cannot quench love,

and rivers will not sweep it away;

If a man were to give all the goods in his house for love

they would just despise him.

8 “We have a little sister and she has no breasts;

what shall we do for our sister on the day when she is to be spoken for?

9 If she is a wall we will build silver battlements on her,

but if she is a door we will board her up with cedar planks.”

10 I am a wall and my breasts are like the towers;

then I was in his eyes like one who finds peace.

11 Solomon had a vineyard at Baal-Hamon;

he gave the vineyard to keepers,

each to bring in a thousand shekels of silver.

12 I have my own vineyard before me;

the thousand for you, Solomon,

and two hundred for those who keep its fruit safe!

13** You that are sitting in the garden,

comrades are listening for your voice;

let me hear it.

14 —Off with you, truelove,

and do like a gazelle

Or a young deer

on the spice mountains.