2. I was asleep but my heart was awake. A sound! My beloved knocking! “Open to me, my sister, my beloved, my dove, my perfect one! For my head is full of dew, my hair drenched from the moist night air.”
3. I have taken off my tunic, must I put it on? I have bathed my feet, must I soil them?
4. My beloved thrust his hand into the opening, and my inmost yearned for him.
5. I myself arose to open to my beloved; my hands dripped with myrrh, my fingers with liquid myrrh upon the handles of the bolt.
6. I opened myself to my beloved, but my beloved had turned and gone; my heart sank when he turned away. I sought him, but I did not find him; I called him, but he did not answer me.
7. The sentinels making rounds in the city found me; they beat me, they wounded me; they took my cloak away from me— those sentinels on the walls!
8. I adjure you, O maidens of Jerusalem, if you find my beloved, what will you tell him? Tell him that I am lovesick!
9. How is your beloved better than another lover, O most beautiful among women? How is your beloved better than another lover, that you adjure us thus?
10. My beloved is radiant and ruddy, distinguished among ten thousand.
11. His head is gold, refined gold; his locks are wavy, black as a raven.
12. His eyes are like doves beside springs of water, bathed in milk, set like mounted jewels.