Canticle of Canticles 8

¹Who shall give to me thee my brother, sucking the breasts of my mother, that I may find thee without, and kiss thee, and now no man despise me?

²I will take hold of thee, and will bring thee into my mother's house: there thou shalt teach me, and I will give thee a cup of spiced wine, and new wine of my pomegranates.

³His left hand under my head, and his right hand shall embrace me.

⁴I adjure you o daughters of Jerusalem, that you raise not up, nor make the beloved to awake till herself will.

⁵Who is this, that cometh up from the desert, flowing with delights, leaning upon her beloved? Under the apple-tree I raised thee up: there thy mother was corrupted, there she was deflowered that bare thee.

⁶Put me as a seal upon thy heart, as a seal upon thine arm: because love is strong as death: jealousy is hard as hell, the lamps thereof lamps of fire and flames.

⁷Many waters cannot quench charity, neither shall floods overwhelm it: if a man shall give all the substance of his house for love, as nothing he shall despise it.

⁸Our sister is little, and hath no breasts. What shall we do to our sister in the day when she is to be spoken unto?

⁹If she be a wall, let us build upon it bulwarks of silver: if she be a door, let us join it together with boards of cedar.

¹⁰I am a wall: and my breasts are as a tower, since I was made before him as one finding peace.

¹¹The peace-maker had a vineyard, in that which hath peoples: he delivered the same to keepers, a man bringeth for the fruit thereof a thousand pieces of silver.

¹²My vineyard is before me. A thousand are thy peace-makers, and two hundred for them, that keep the fruits thereof.

¹³Thou dwellest in the gardens, the friends do harken: make me hear thy voice.

¹⁴Fly, o my beloved, and be like to the roe, and to the fawn of harts upon the mountains of aromatical spices.