I came to my garden, my sister, my bride,
    I gathered my myrrh with my spice,
    I ate my honeycomb with my honey,
    I drank my wine with my milk.

Eat, friends, drink,
    and be drunk with love!

² I slept, but my heart was awake.
A sound! My beloved is knocking.
“Open to me, my sister, my love,
    my dove, my perfect one,
for my head is wet with dew,
    my locks with the drops of the night.”
³ I had put off my garment;
    how could I put it on?
I had bathed my feet;
    how could I soil them?
⁴ My beloved put his hand to the latch,
    and my heart was thrilled within me.
⁵ I arose to open to my beloved,
    and my hands dripped with myrrh,
my fingers with liquid myrrh,
    on the handles of the bolt.
⁶ I opened to my beloved,
    but my beloved had turned and gone.
My soul failed me when he spoke.
I sought him, but found him not;
    I called him, but he gave no answer.
⁷ The watchmen found me
    as they went about in the city;
they beat me, they bruised me,
    they took away my veil,
    those watchmen of the walls.
⁸ I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem,
    if you find my beloved,
that you tell him
    I am sick with love.

⁹ What is your beloved more than another beloved,
    O most beautiful among women?
What is your beloved more than another beloved,
    that you thus adjure us?

¹⁰ My beloved is radiant and ruddy,
    distinguished among ten thousand.
¹¹ His head is the finest gold;
    his locks are wavy,
    black as a raven.
¹² His eyes are like doves
    beside streams of water,
bathed in milk,
    sitting beside a full pool.^[a]
13 His cheeks are like beds of spices,
    mounds of sweet-smelling herbs.
His lips are lilies,
    dripping liquid myrrh.
¹⁴ His arms are rods of gold,
    set with jewels.
His body is polished ivory,^[b]
    bedecked with sapphires.^[c]
15 His legs are alabaster columns,
    set on bases of gold.
His appearance is like Lebanon,
    choice as the cedars.
¹⁶ His mouth^[d] is most sweet,
    and he is altogether desirable.
This is my beloved and this is my friend,
    O daughters of Jerusalem.

Where has your beloved gone,
    O most beautiful among women?
Where has your beloved turned,
    that we may seek him with you?

² My beloved has gone down to his garden
    to the beds of spices,
to graze^[e] in the gardens
    and to gather lilies.
³ I am my beloved's and my beloved is mine;
    he grazes among the lilies.

⁴ You are beautiful as Tirzah, my love,
    lovely as Jerusalem,
    awesome as an army with banners.
⁵ Turn away your eyes from me,
    for they overwhelm me—
Your hair is like a flock of goats
    leaping down the slopes of Gilead.
⁶ Your teeth are like a flock of ewes
    that have come up from the washing;
all of them bear twins;
    not one among them has lost its young.
⁷ Your cheeks are like halves of a pomegranate
    behind your veil.
⁸ There are sixty queens and eighty concubines,
    and virgins without number.
⁹ My dove, my perfect one, is the only one,
    the only one of her mother,
    pure to her who bore her.
The young women saw her and called her blessed;
    the queens and concubines also, and they praised her.

¹¹ I went down to the nut orchard
    to look at the blossoms of the valley,
to see whether the vines had budded,
    whether the pomegranates were in bloom.
¹² Before I was aware, my desire set me
    among the chariots of my kinsman, a prince.^[f]

^13 [g] Return, return, O Shulammite,
    return, return, that we may look upon you.

Why should you look upon the Shulammite,
    as upon a dance before two armies?^[h]