¹ CHORUS: Where did your lover go, O loveliest of women? Which way did your lover turn so that we can help you seek him?

² BELOVED: My love went down to his garden, to the beds of spices, to pasture his flock on the grass and gather lilies.

³ I belong to my love, and my love to me. He pastures his flock among the lilies.

⁴ LOVER: You are fair as Tirzah, my beloved, enchanting as Jerusalem, formidable as an army!

⁵ Turn your eyes away from me, they take me by assault! Your hair is like a flock of goats surging down the slopes of Gilead.

⁶ Your teeth are like a flock of ewes as they come up from being washed. Each one has its twin, not one unpaired with another.

⁷ Your cheeks, behind your veil, are halves of pomegranate.

⁸ There are sixty queens and eighty concubines (and countless girls).

⁹ My dove is my only one, perfect and mine. She is the darling of her mother, the favourite of the one who bore her. Girls have seen her and proclaimed her blessed, queens and concubines have sung her praises,

¹⁰ 'Who is this arising like the dawn, fair as the moon, resplendent as the sun, formidable as an army?'

¹¹ I went down to the nut orchard to see the fresh shoots in the valley, to see if the vines were budding and the pomegranate trees in flower.

¹² Before I knew . . . my desire had hurled me onto the chariots of Amminadib!