Read the Bible

¹Where has your beloved gone,

O most beautiful among women?

Where has your beloved turned,

that we may seek him with you?

²My beloved has gone down to his garden

to the beds of spices,

to graze in the gardens

and to gather lilies.

³I am my beloved's and my beloved is mine;

he grazes among the lilies.

⁴You are beautiful as Tirzah, my love,

lovely as Jerusalem,

awesome as an army with banners.

⁵Turn away your eyes from me,

for they overwhelm me—

Your hair is like a flock of goats

leaping down the slopes of Gilead.

⁶Your 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.

⁷Your cheeks are like halves of a pomegranate

behind your veil.

⁸There are sixty queens and eighty concubines,

and virgins without number.

⁹My 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.

¹⁰“Who is this who looks down like the dawn,

beautiful as the moon, bright as the sun,

awesome as an army with banners?”

¹¹I 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.

¹²Before I was aware, my desire set me

among the chariots of my kinsman, a prince.

¹³Return, 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?