Your Lover (Part Iii)
Listen to your lover as he comes, gazing in your windows, peering
through the lattice, leaping across your mountains and bounding over your hills
like a gazelle or young stag in your garden orchard of pomegranates with choice
fruits, with henna and nard, saffron, calamus and cinnamon with every kind of
incense tree with myrrh and aloes, and all the finest spices streaming with wells
of flowing water that go down from Lebanon; I am drenched with dew as I cry out-
I call to you, arise my darling, my beautiful one and come with me. Let us roam
the countryside and go into the fields. Let us spend the night in the villages and
go early to the vineyards to see if the vines have budded, if their tender grapes do
appear, if the pomegranates are in bloom as the mandrakes send forth their
fragrance at our gates. There will I give you all manner of pleasant fruit, and
there I will give you more love until the day breaks and the shadows flee. You
have given me your vineyard, now all in my kingdom is yours. So come, come
away upon the spice-laden mountains and receive my love.
I will love you and give myself for you. I will love you as myself, even
as my own body, for he who loves his wife loves himself. So, I will nourish you; I
will clothe you; I will carefully protect you from danger, spot and wrinkle to present
you in glorious splendor. I will cherish you for you are my body, and I am your
head. Take care of me as your own. I give you honor with your reverence as we
both submit ourselves one to another in the fear of God, and many waters will not
quench our love, neither will the floods drown it, for its coals are the coals of fire,
as the vehement flame of God that none would dare try to put asunder what God
has joined together, and our threefold chord will not be broken. With Jesus, you
and me, we have security, help, warmth, and strength. So, let us give thanks
always for everything to our God and Father in the name of Jesus our Lord for His
Spirit, one another and this day and each day that we can come together and
rejoice and exhilirate each other with love and happiness. May our peace be
forever and ever in love.
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