The Song of Solomon : and the Lamentations of Jeremiah

V. i-viii.] LOVE UNQUENCHABLE 37
The proud bride would now lead her swain to her
mother's house.-' There is no mention of her father
apparently he is not living. But the fond way in
which this simple girl speaks of her mother reveals
another lovely trait in her character. She has witnessed
the wearisome magnificence of Solomon's palace. It
was impossible to associate the idea of home with such
a place. We never hear the daughters of Jerusalem,
those poor degraded women of the harem, speaking of
their mothers. But to the Shulammite no spot on
earth is so dear as her mother's cottage. There her
lover shall have spiced wine and pomegranate juice
— ;
simple home-made country beverages.^ Repeating one
of the early refrains of the poem, the happy bride is
not afraid to say that there too her husband shall
support her in his strong embrace,^ She then repeats
another refrain, and for the last time—surely one would
say now, quite superfluously—she adjures the daughters
of Jerusalem not to awaken any love for Solomon in
her, but to leave love to its spontaneous course.*
Now the bridegroom is seen coming up from the
wilderness with his bride leaning upon him, and telling
how he first made love to her when he found her asleep
under an apple tree in the garden of the cottage where
she was born.'' As they converse together we reach
the richest gem of the poem, the Shulammite's impas-
sioned eulogy of love.^ She bids her husband set her
as a seal upon his heart in the inner sanctuary of his
being, and as a seal upon his arm—always owning her,
always true to her in the outer world. She is to be his
closely, his openly, his for ever. She has proved her
' vui. 2. ^ viii. 3.
- viii. 2. ' viii. 4.
' viii. 5.
° viii. 6, 7.