xpressed.

Something else was expressed. The Song of Songs is the gospel of love.
Humanity at the time was sullen when not base. Nowhere was there love. The
anterior stories of Jacob and Rachel, of Rebekah and Isaac, of Boaz and
Ruth, are little novels, subsequently evolved, concerning people that had
lived long before and probably never lived at all. To scholars they are
wholly fabulous. Even otherwise, these legends do not, when analyzed,
disclose love. Ruth herself with her magnificent phrase--"Where thou
goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge; thy people shall
be my people, and thy God my God,"--does not display it. Historically its
advent is in the Song of Songs.

The poem, perhaps originally a pastoral in dialogue form, but more
probably a play, has, for central situation, the love of a peasant for a
shepherd, a love tender and true, stronger than death, stronger at least
than a monarch's will. The scene, laid three thousand years ago in
Solomon's seraglio, represents the triumph of constancy over corruption,
the constancy of a girl, unique in her day, who resisted a king,
preferring a hovel to his harem. In an epoch more frankly unmoral than any
of which history has cognizance, this girl, a native of Shulam, very
simple, very ignorant, necessarily unrefined, possessed, through some
miracle, that instinctive exclusiveness which, subsequently disseminated
and ingrained, refurbished the world. She was the usher of love. The Song
of Songs, interpreted mystically by the Church and profanely by scholars,
is therefore sacred. It is the first evangel of the heart.

From the existing text, the original plan, and with it the original
meaning, have disappeared. Many exegetes, notably Ewald, have demonstrated
that the disappearance is due to manipulations and omissions, and many
others, Renan in particular, have attempted reconstructions. The version
here given is based on his.[3] From it a few expressions, no longer in
conformity with modern taste, and several passages, otherwise redundant,
have been omited. By way of proem it may be noted that the Shulamite,
previously abducted from her native village--a hamlet to the north of
Jerusalem--is supposed to be forcibly brought into the presence of the
king where, however, she has thought only of her lover.

THE SONGS OF SONGS.

ACT I.

SOLOMON, IN ALL HIS GLORY, SURROUNDED BY HIS SERAGLIO AND HIS GUARDS.

AN ODALISQUE

Let him kiss me with the