Song of Solomon, 8

1. Ah, why are you not my brother, nursed at my mother's breast! Then if I met you out of doors, I could kiss you without people thinking ill of me.

2. I should lead you, I should take you into my mother's house, and you would teach me! I should give you spiced wine to drink, juice of my pomegranates.

3. His left arm is under my head and his right embraces me.

4. LOVER: I charge you, daughters of Jerusalem, do not rouse, do not wake my beloved, before she pleases!

5. Who is this coming up from the desert leaning on her lover? I awakened you under the apple tree, where your mother conceived you, where she who bore you conceived you.

6. BELOVED: Set me like a seal on your heart, like a seal on your arm. For love is strong as Death, passion as relentless as Sheol. The flash of it is a flash of fire, a flame of Yahweh himself.

7. Love no flood can quench, no torrents drown. Were a man to offer all his family wealth to buy love, contempt is all that he would gain.

8. Our sister is little: her breasts are not yet formed. What shall we do for our sister on the day she is spoken for?

9. If she is a rampart, on the crest we shall build a battlement of silver; if she is a door, we shall board her up with planks of cedar.

10. I am a wall, and my breasts represent its towers. And under their eyes I have found true peace.

11. Solomon had a vineyard at Baal-Hamon. He entrusted it to overseers, and each one was to pay him the value of its produce, a thousand shekels of silver.

12. But I tend my own vineyard myself. You, Solomon, may have your thousand shekels, and those who oversee its produce their two hundred.

13. You who dwell in the gardens, my companions listen for your voice; let me hear it.

14. Haste away, my love, be like a gazelle, a young stag, on the spice-laden mountains.