Cantar de los Cantares 8

¹Oh, that you were my brother, nursed at my mother's breasts! If I met you out of doors, I would kiss you and none would taunt me.

²I would lead you, bring you in to the home of my mother. There you would teach me to give you spiced wine to drink and pomegranate juice.

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

⁴I adjure you, daughters of Jerusalem, by the gazelles and hinds of the field, Do not arouse, do not stir up love, before its own time.

⁵D Who is this coming up from the desert, leaning upon her lover? G Under the apple tree I awakened you; it was there that your mother conceived you, it was there that your parent conceived.

⁶B Set me as a seal on your heart, as a seal on your arm; For stern as death is love, relentless as the nether world is devotion; its flames are a blazing fire.

⁷Deep waters cannot quench love, nor floods sweep it away. Were one to offer all he owns to purchase love, he would be roundly mocked.

⁸Our sister is little and she has no breasts as yet. What shall we do for our sister when her courtship begins?

⁹If she is a wall, we will build upon it a silver parapet; If she is a door, we will reinforce it with a cedar plank.

¹⁰I am a wall, and my breasts are like towers. So now in his eyes I have become one to be welcomed.

¹¹B Solomon had a vineyard at Baal-hamon; he gave over the vineyard to caretakers. For its fruit one would have to pay a thousand silver pieces.

¹²My vineyard is at my own disposal; the thousand pieces are for you, O Solomon, and two hundred for the caretakers of its fruit.

¹³G O garden-dweller, my friends are listening for your voice, let me hear it!

¹⁴B Be swift, my lover, like a gazelle or a young stag on the mountains of spices!