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.