Song of Songs 4

¹ How beautiful you are, my love, how beautiful you are! Your eyes, behind your veil, are doves; your hair is like a flock of goats frisking down the slopes of Gilead.

² Your teeth are like a flock of shorn ewes as they come up from the washing. Each one has its twin, not one unpaired with another.

³ Your lips are a scarlet thread and your words enchanting. Your cheeks, behind your veil, are halves of pomegranate.

⁴ Your neck is the tower of David built as a fortress, hung round with a thousand bucklers, and each the shield of a hero.

⁵ Your two breasts are two fawns, twins of a gazelle, that feed among the lilies.

⁶ Before the dawn-wind rises, before the shadows flee, I will go to the mountain of myrrh, to the hill of frankincense.

⁷ You are wholly beautiful, my love, and without a blemish.

⁸ Come from Lebanon, my promised bride, come from Lebanon, come on your way. Lower your gaze, from the heights of Amana, from the crests of Senir and Hermon, the haunt of lions, the mountains of leopards.

⁹ You ravish my heart, my sister,[*a] my promised bride, you ravish my heart with a single one of your glances, with one single pearl of your necklace.

¹⁰ What spells lie in your love, my sister, my promised bride! How delicious is your love, more delicious than wine! How fragrant your perfumes, more fragrant than all other spices!

¹¹ Your lips, my promised one, distil wild honey. Honey and milk are under your tongue; and the scent of your garments is like the scent of Lebanon.

¹² She is a garden enclosed, my sister, my promised bride; a garden enclosed, a sealed fountain.

¹³ Your shoots form an orchard of pomegranate trees, the rarest essences are yours:

¹⁴ nard and saffron, calamus and cinnamon, with all the incense-bearing trees; myrrh and aloes, with the subtlest odours.

¹⁵ Fountain that makes the gardens fertile, well of living water, streams flowing down from Lebanon.

¹⁶ Awake, north wind, come, wind of the south! Breathe over my garden, to spread its sweet smell around. Let my Beloved come into his garden, let him taste its rarest fruits.