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Your very form resembles a date-palm,[a]
    and your breasts, clusters.
I thought, “Let me climb the date-palm!
    Let me take hold of its branches!
Let your breasts be like clusters of the vine
    and the fragrance of your breath like apples,
10 And your mouth like the best wine—
    Wthat flows down smoothly for my lover,
    gliding[b] over my lips and teeth.

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Footnotes

  1. 7:8–9 Date-palm: a figure of stateliness. The lover is eager to enjoy the possession of his beloved.
  2. 7:10 Gliding: the beloved interrupts her partner’s compliment by referring to the intoxication of their union. The translation rests on an emendation of the enigmatic “the lips of the sleepers.”

I said, “I will climb the palm tree;
    I will take hold of its fruit.”
May your breasts be like clusters of grapes on the vine,
    the fragrance of your breath like apples,(A)
    and your mouth like the best wine.

She

May the wine go straight to my beloved,(B)
    flowing gently over lips and teeth.[a]
10 I belong to my beloved,
    and his desire(C) is for me.(D)

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Footnotes

  1. Song of Songs 7:9 Septuagint, Aquila, Vulgate and Syriac; Hebrew lips of sleepers