The Shulamite

‎All efforts to construct a completed story from this most intricate of books must depend largely on fancy; but there is certainly running all through it the piteous picture of the longing woman once referred to as the Shulamite. “Return, return, O Shulamite; return, return, that we may look upon thee. What will ye see in the Shulamite? As it were the company of two armies.” Shut away from the care and protection of him to whom she has pledged herself, she spends her time in dreaming of him, in yearning and lamenting. “I opened to my beloved; but my beloved had withdrawn himself, and was gone: my soul failed when he spake: I sought him, but I could not find him; I called him, but he gave me no answer.”

‎“Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm: for love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave: the coals thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame."

‎“Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it: if a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be contemned.”