Bridging the Continental divide: neo-Latin and its cultural role in Jacobean Scotland, as seen in the Delitiae Poetarum Scotorum (1637)

  [p95]

[Paraphrase of] Song of Solomon [chapter 1]

1Oh that my man would touch me with the sweet nectar of his kisses! For your fine and graceful love is sweeter than sweet nectar.

5Because of your flowing fragrance, because of the charm of your honorable name, more delightful than sweet balsam,   [p96] beautiful, chaste, and pious girls seek you out, love you, and desperately adore you.

10Snatch me away and drag me, and following behind we will hasten on. The king has borne me into the innermost chambers of his palace. Joyfully we shall then exult in you: in you we shall rejoice, and your love, sweeter than sweet nectar and honey, gratefully we shall praise. The pious, holy, and unmolested youth thirst after you with the fiery passion of an undimmed love.

19O you holy girls, who dwell in holy Jerusalem, although I am somewhat dark, nevertheless I am fair, and elegant, just like the tents of Kedar, a of the sort which Solomon used to pitch, scorched on the outside by the relentless sun: moreover I am bedecked in jewels, pale jewels, charming little jewels, lightly sparkling jewels, and in gleaming gold too.

27Not upon me, I pray, gaze not upon me with a disapproving look, nor with a sterner eye: since, a little dark and dejected, having been exposed to the relentless light of the sun, to its immovable eye, my skin is baked and I am defaced.

32The brood sprung from my maternal family (alas a brood of savage brothers) raged against me with fiery intensity, ordering me, who is cast out, unkempt, a vagabond to watch these vines and those vines: while my faith's due allotment, which was entrusted to me, a noble bud of fruit-bearing vine, I cannot tend to!

40You, you my light, my true honey, my delights, my loveliness, my flower, my sweetness, my heart, speaking from your rosey little lips, tell me now where you graze? Where do you take your flock worn out by excessive heat for refreshment, when the fiery sun threatens with its flame,   [p97] and cracks the fields with its scorching heat? Why wandering like a vagabond, lost, unchaste should I submit to your companions, the treacherous masters of your flock?

51O the pretty form of pretty little women, how many there are, how many there have been, and how many there can be! O little girl, elegant, unmolested, and as charming as it is possible to be; if a pasture of lusher grass, or a branch shady with a lighter breeze conceals you, faint with hunger and thirst, go, pound the sacred footpaths carved out by the feet of your little flock: go, feed your flock, besides the tents of the good shepherds.

62My light, you are just like the glittering mare, who drives forth the chariots of the Pharaohs. b

64Your milky neck glows, surrounded by jewels and a necklace of gems. We shall now make for you a bracelet from gold, smoothed by the hand of an artist. It shall be from gold, with silver images on it: scrolled artwork, gold-plated, sparkling with stars, and adorned with little points, and distinguished with various gems.

72While the king at ease on his feasting-couch spreads charms delightful in their splendour; here and there and far and wide does my nard plant c emit its pleasing, soft sweet smell.

76The object of my ardour is a bouquet of nard bound to me, and sleeps through the night between my white breasts.

79To me the object of my ardour is a sweet grape from sweet-smelling Cyprus, among the rosey grapes of most fertile Engaddi. d O how beautifully you shine forth, how lovely with the eyes of a little dove you shine forth! O my beautiful desire, o my love! Ah sweet also and so pristine in all respects:   [p98] ah our marriage bed is also young, and flourishing with our embraces and our kisses! How the ceiling of our house shines down, with perennial cedar beams; with beautiful Lebanese timbers.