The Speaker: Who is this coming up from the desert like a column of smoke, like a fragrant billow of myrrh and frankincense, every kind of fragrant powder of the traveling merchants?

spikenard and saffron, calamus and cinnamon, with every kind of incense tree; myrrh and aloes, with all the best spices,

“What kind of beloved is your beloved,
O most beautiful among women?
What kind of beloved is your beloved,
That thus you adjure us?”

There are sixty queens and eighty mistresses, and too many young women to count,

The mandrakes give [off their] fragrance, and {over our doorway is every kind of delicious fruit}; both {fresh and dried fruit I have stored up} for you, O my beloved.

Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it: if a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be contemned.