1. Where have you hidden,

Beloved, and left me moaning?

You fled like the stag

after wounding me;

I went out calling you, but you were gone.

2. Shepherds, you who go

up through the sheepfolds to the hill,

if by chance you see

him I love most,

tell him I am sick, I suffer, and I die.

3. Seeking my love

I will head for the mountains and for watersides;

I will not gather flowers,

nor fear wild beasts;

I will go beyond strong men and frontiers.

4. O woods and thickets

planted by the hand of my Beloved!

O green meadow,

coated, bright, with flowers,

tell me, has he passed by you?

5. Pouring out a thousand graces,

he passed these groves in haste;

and having looked at them,

with his image alone,

clothed them in beauty.

6. Ah, who has the power to heal me?

Now wholly surrender yourself!

Do not send me

any more messengers;

they cannot tell me what I must hear.

7. All who are free

tell me a thousand graceful things of you;

all wound me more

and leave me dying

of, ah, I-don't-know-what behind their stammering.

8. How do you endure

O life, not living where you live,

and being brought near death

by the arrows you receive

from that which you conceive of your Beloved?

9. Why, since you wounded

this heart, don't you heal it?

And why, since you stole it from me,

do you leave it so,

and fail to carry off what you have stolen?

10. Extinguish these miseries,

since no one else can stamp them out;

and may my eyes behold you,

because you are their light,

and I would open them to you alone.1

11. O spring like crystal!

If only, on your silvered-over faces,

you would suddenly form

the eyes I have desired,

that I bear sketched deep within my heart.

12. Withdraw them, Beloved,

I am taking flight!

Bridegroom

- Return, dove,

the wounded stag

is in sight on the hill,

cooled by the breeze of your flight.

The Bride

13. My Beloved, the mountains,

and lonely wooded valleys,

strange islands,

and resounding rivers,

the whistling of love-stirring breezes,

14. the tranquil night

at the time of the rising dawn,

silent music,

sounding solitude,

the supper that refreshes, and deepens love.

15. Our bed is in flower,

bound round with linking dens of lions,

hung with purple,

built up in peace,

and crowned with a thousand shields of gold.

16. Following your footprints

maidens run along the way;

the touch of a spark,

the spiced wine,

cause flowings in them from the balsam of God.

17. In the inner wine cellar

I drank of my Beloved, and, when I went abroad

through all this valley,

I no longer knew anything,

and lost the herd that I was following.

18. There he gave me his breast;

there he taught me a sweet and living knowledge;

and I gave myself to him,

keeping nothing back;

there I promised to be his bride.

19. Now I occupy my soul

and all my energy in his service;

I no longer tend the herd,

nor have I any other work

now that my every act is love.

20. If, then, I am no longer

seen or found on the common,

you will say that I am lost;

that, stricken by love,

I lost myself, and was found.

21. With flowers and emeralds

chosen on cool mornings

we shall weave garlands

flowering in your love,

and bound with one hair of mine.

22. You considered

that one hair fluttering at my neck;

you gazed at it upon my neck

and it captivated you;

and one of my eyes wounded you.

23. When you looked at me

your eyes imprinted your grace in me;

for this you loved me ardently;

and thus my eyes deserved

to adore what they beheld in you.

24. Do not despise me;

for if, before, you found me dark,

now truly you can look at me

since you have looked

and left in me grace and beauty.

25. Catch us the foxes,

for our vineyard is now in flower,

while we fashion a cone of roses

intricate as the pine's;

and let no one appear on the hill.

26. Be still, deadening north wind;

south wind come, you that waken love,

breathe through my garden,

let its fragrance flow,

and the Beloved will feed amid the flowers.

Bridegroom

27. The bride has entered

the sweet garden of her desire,

and she rests in delight,

laying her neck

on the gentle arms of her Beloved.

28. Beneath the apple tree:

there I took you for my own,

there I offered you my hand,

and restored you,

where your mother was corrupted.

29. Swift-winged birds,

lions, stags, and leaping roes,

mountains, lowlands, and river banks,

waters, winds, and ardors,

watching fears of night:

30. By the pleasant lyres

and the siren's song, I conjure you

to cease your anger

and not touch the wall,

that the bride may sleep in deeper peace.

Bride

31. You girls of Judea,

while among flowers and roses

the amber spreads its perfume,

stay away, there on the outskirts:

do not so much as seek to touch our thresholds.

32. Hide yourself, my love;

turn your face toward the mountains,

and do not speak;

but look at those companions

going with her through strange islands.

Bridegroom

33. The small white dove

has returned to the ark with an olive branch;

and now the turtledove

has found its longed-for mate

by the green river banks.

34. She lived in solitude,

and now in solitude has built her nest;

and in solitude he guides her,

he alone, who also bears

in solitude the wound of love.

Bride

35. Let us rejoice, Beloved,

and let us go forth to behold

ourselves in your beauty,

to the mountain and to the hill,

to where the pure water flows,

and further, deep into the thicket.

36. And then we will go on

to the high caverns in the rock

which are so well concealed;

there we shall enter

and taste the fresh juice of the pomegranates.

37. There you will show me

what my soul has been seeking,

and then you will give me,

you, my life, will give me there

what you gave me on that other day:

38. the breathing of the air,

the song of the sweet nightingale;

the grove and its living beauty

in the serene night,

with a flame that is consuming and painless.

39. No one looked at her,

nor did Aminadab appear;

the siege was still;

and the cavalry,

at the sight of the waters, descended.