The first beautiful garden was Eden, but it had a serpent in it and two forbidden trees and the garden was bounded and gated and God watched over it. But in the Song of Songs, nature -- twenty-five species of plants and ten of animals are described in under two hundred verses -- is open and space unbounded. The field of endeavor extends indefinitely in all directions and every way is open. That's why the man sings:
Rise up my love, my fair one, and come away.
And later:
Come with me from Lebanon my bride,
With me from Lebanon;
Look from the top of Amana,
From the top of Senir and Hermon,
From the lions' dens,
From the mountains of the leopards.
(4:8)
The lovers range from Lebanon to Gilead to En Gedi to the snows of Amana. They both sing to each other. The woman also sings to a female chorus, who respond to her. No serpent lurks as a tempter. God is never mentioned in the poem. The law and commandments are left out. Nearly fifty words in The Song of Songs appear nowhere else in the Bible. It makes you wonder how it passed the censorious priests to get into the canon in the first place. Scholars don't seem to know when it was written and estimates range across more than half a millennium. The closest parallels I can find to its tone and content are in the ancient Egyptian love poems.
she says:
I went to his house, and the door was open.
(Egyptian Love Poetry. Ezra Pound, translator.)
My beloved was at his ma's side
with brothers and sisters about him.
Everybody who passes has sympathy for him,
an excellent boy, none like him,
a friend of rare quality.
He looked at me when I passed
and my heart was in jubilee.
If my mother knew what I am thinking
she would go to him at once.
How similar to:
When I found him whom my soul loveth:
(3:4)
Behold, he standeth behind our wall,
(2:9)
I held him, and would not let him go
Until I had brought him into my mother's house,
And into the chamber of her that conceived me.
He looketh through the windows,
He peereth through the lattice.
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