[28] ii. 3.
[29] ii. 4.
She is fainting. How she longs for her lover to comfort her! She has just compared him to an apple tree; now the refreshment she hungers for is the fruit of this tree; that is to say, his love.[30] Oh that he would put his arms round her and support her, as in the old happy days before she had been snatched away from him![31]
[30] ii. 5.
[31] ii. 6.
Next follows a verse which is repeated later, and so serves as a sort of refrain.[32] The Shulammite adjures the daughters of Jerusalem not to awaken love. This verse is misrendered in the Authorised Version, which inserts the pronoun "my" before "love" without any warrant in the Hebrew text. The poor girl has spoken of apples. But the court ladies must not misunderstand her. She wants none of their love apples,[33] no philtre, no charm to turn her affections away from her shepherd lover and pervert them to the importunate royal suitor. The opening words of the poem which celebrated the charms of Solomon had been aimed in that direction. The motive of the work seems to be the Shulammite's resistance to various attempts to move her from loyalty to her true love. It is natural, therefore, that an appeal to desist from all such attempts should come out emphatically.
[32] ii. 7.
[33] See Gen. xxx. 14.
The poem takes a new turn. In imagination the Shulammite hears the voice of her beloved. She pictures him standing at the foot of the lofty rock on which the harem is built, and crying,--
"Oh, my dove, that art in the clefts of the rock, in the cover of the steep place, Let me see thy countenance, let me hear thy voice; For sweet is thy voice, and thy countenance is comely."[34]
[34] ii. 14.
He is like a troubadour singing to his imprisoned lady-love; and she, in her soliloquys, though not by any means a "high-born maiden," may call to mind the simile in Shelley's _Skylark_:--
"Like a high-born maiden In a palace tower, Soothing her love-laden Soul in secret hour, With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower."
She remembers how her lover had come to her bounding over the hills "like a roe or a young hart,"[35] and peeping in at her lattice; and she repeats the song with which he had called her out--one of the sweetest songs of spring that ever was sung.[36] In our own green island we acknowledge that this is the most beautiful season of all the round year; but in Palestine it stands out in more strongly pronounced contrast to the three other seasons, and it is in itself exceedingly lovely. While summer and autumn are there parched with drought, barren and desolate, and while winter is often dreary with snow-storms and floods of rain, in spring the whole land is one lovely garden, ablaze with richest hues, hill and dale, wilderness and farmland vying in the luxuriance of their wild flowers, from the red anemone that fires the steep sides of the mountains to the purple and white cyclamen that nestles among the rocks at their feet. Much of the beauty of this poem is found in the fact that it is pervaded by the spirit of an eastern spring. This makes it possible to introduce a wealth of beautiful imagery which would not have been appropriate if any other season had been chosen. Even more lovely in March than England is in May, Palestine comes nearest to the appearance of our country in the former month; so that this poem, that is so completely bathed in the atmosphere of early spring, calls up echoes of the exquisite English garden pictures in Shelley's _Sensitive Plant_ and Tennyson's _Maud_. But it is not only beauty of imagery that our poet gains by setting his work in this lovely season. His ideas are all in harmony with the period of the year he describes so charmingly. It is the time of youth and hope, of joy and love--especially of love, for,