6  How beautiful and pleasant you are,

O loved one, with all your delights!¹

7  Your stature is like a palm tree,

and your breasts are like its clusters.

8  I say I will climb the palm tree

and lay hold of its fruit.

Oh may your breasts be like clusters of the vine,

and the scent of your breath like apples,

9  and your ^vmouth² like the best wine.

It goes down smoothly for my beloved,

gliding over lips and teeth.³

10  ^wI am my beloved’s,

and his desire is for me.

11  Come, my beloved,

let us go out into the fields

and lodge in the villages;⁴

12  let us go out early to the vineyards

and ^xsee whether the vines have budded,

whether the grape ^yblossoms have opened

and the pomegranates are in bloom.

There I will give you my love.

13  The ^zmandrakes give forth fragrance,

and beside our doors are all ^achoice fruits,

new as well as old,

which I have laid up for you, O my beloved.

1  Oh that you were like a brother to me

who nursed at my mother’s breasts!

If I found you outside, I would kiss you,

and none would despise me.

2  I would lead you and ^bbring you

into the house of my mother—

she who used to teach me.

I would give you spiced wine to drink,

the juice of my pomegranate.

3  ^cHis left hand is under my head,

and his right hand embraces me!

4  ^dI adjure you, O ^edaughters of Jerusalem,

that you not stir up or awaken love

until it pleases.

5  ^fWho is that coming up from the wilderness,

leaning on ^gher beloved?

Under the apple tree I awakened you.

There your mother was in labor with you;

there she who bore you was in labor.

6  Set me ^has a seal upon your heart,

as a seal upon your arm,

for love is strong as death,

jealousy⁵ is fierce as the grave.⁶

Its flashes are flashes of fire,

the very flame of the Lord.

7  Many waters cannot quench love,

neither can floods drown it.

If a man offered for love

all the wealth of his house,

he⁷ would be utterly despised.

8  We have a little sister,

and she has no breasts.

What shall we do for our sister

on the day when she is spoken for?

9  If she is a wall,

we will build on her a battlement of silver,

but if she is a door,

we will enclose her with boards of cedar.

10  I was a wall,

and my breasts were like towers;

then I was in his eyes

as one who finds⁸ peace.

11  Solomon ⁱhad a vineyard at Baal-hamon;

he let out the vineyard to keepers;

each one was to bring for its fruit a thousand pieces of silver.

12  ^jMy vineyard, my very own, is before me;

you, O Solomon, may have the thousand,

and the keepers of the fruit two hundred.

13  O you who dwell in the gardens,

with ^kcompanions listening for your voice;

^llet me hear it.

14  Make haste, my beloved,

and be ^mlike a gazelle

or a young stag

on the ⁿmountains of spices.