Flora Unveiled

128 i Flora Unveiled

wreaths and attractive, sweet- smelling flowers. Some of the poems suggest a garden scene,
as when the girl sings:

I am headed to the “Love Garden,”

my bosom full of persea^86 branches

my hair laden with balm.

I am a noblewoman

I am the Mistress of the Two Lands,

when I am with you.^87

The tradition of erotically charged marriage songs reached its apogee in the biblical Song
of Songs, perhaps composed as late as the third century bce. Consistent with such a late
composition, the poem reflects the influence of Hellenism, and some scholars have pointed
out similarities to the pastoral idylls of Theocritus of Alexandria.^88
Like all great literature, and also because of its fragmentary and sometimes cryptic
nature, the Song of Songs can be read on many levels. Several voices can be identified:  the
adolescent girl (the “Shulamite”), her male lover (sometimes identified as King Solomon),
the Shulamite’s supportive sisters (the “daughters of Zion”), and even, according to some
scholars, her protective brothers. The poem takes the form of a bridal poem, or epithala-
mium—in the form of an antiphony involving a call and response between the Shulamite
and her betrothed—while the sisters and brothers offer occasional commentary similar to
a Greek chorus.
The Song of Songs takes place in a garden, and the Shulamite is identified with the garden
itself, as seen in what is arguably its most famous line:  “My sister, my spouse, is a garden
enclosed, a garden enclosed, a fountain sealed” (4:12). In medieval literature, especially,
the wall around the garden is usually interpreted as symbolizing a bride’s virginity, but the
descriptions in Song of Songs (1:12– 14) are more suggestive of consummated love:

My king lay down beside me

and my fragrance

wakened the night.

All night between my breasts

my love is a cluster of myrhh,

a sheaf of henna blossoms

in the vineyards of Ein Gedi.^89

The wall of the enclosed garden could signify the bridegroom’s exclusive access to the
bride’s person. At another point in the poem, the Shulamite invites the lover to come
into “his” garden, indicating his ownership: “Let my beloved come into his garden, and
eat the fruit of his apple trees,” and the bridegroom responded with, “I am come into my
garden, my sister, my spouse,” establishing “his proprietary rights over both woman and
garden.”^90
In the famous line, “I am the rose of Sharon and the lily of the valleys” (2:1), the Shulamite
compares herself to the two flowers, rose and lily, that would later be assimilated by medieval