"I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, By the (free) gazelles, by the hinds in the field, That ye stir not up, nor awaken love, Until it please." This refrain is repeated the second time just before a picture of Solomon's glory, shaded by a suggestion that all is not brightness even around this Prince of Peace. The ladies of the seraglio are summoned to look out and see the passing of the King in state, seated on his palanquin of purple and gold, but escorted by armed men "because of fear in the night." In immediate contrast with that scene, we see Shulamith going off with her humble lover, now his bride, to his field and to her vineyard, and singing a beautiful song of love, strong as death, flame-tipped arrow of a god, unquenchable, unpurchaseable. Though according to the revised version of vi. 12 her relatives are princely, and it may be they who invite her to return (vi. 13), she says, "I am my beloved's." With him she will go into the field and lodge in the village (vii. 10, 11). She finds her own little garden and does not envy Solomon. "Solomon hath a vineyard at Baalhamon; He hath let out the vineyard to keepers; Each for the fruit thereof was to bring a thousand pieces of silver: My vineyard, which is mine, is before me: Thou, O Solomon, shall have the thousand, And those that keep the fruit thereof two hundred." There was, as we see in Koheleth, a prevailing tradition that Solomon felt the hollowness of his palatial life. "See life with a woman thou lovest." The wife is the fountain: "Bethink thee of thy fountain In the days of thy youth." This perhaps gave rise to a theory that the shepherd lover was Solomon himself in disguise, like the god Krishna among the cow-maidens. It does not appear probable that any thought of that kind was in the writer of this Song. Certainly there appears not to be any purpose of lowering Solomon personally in enthroning Love above him. There is no hint of any religious or moral objection to him, and indeed throughout the work Solomon appears in a favourable light personally,--he is beloved by the daughters of Jerusalem (v. 10)--though his royal estate is, as we have seen, shown in a light not altogether enviable. Threescore mighty men guard him: "every man hath his sword upon his thigh because of fear in the night," and the day of his heart's gladness was the day of his espousals (iii. 8, 11). It is not improbable that there is an allusion to Solomon's magic seal in the first lines of the hymn to Love (viii. 6). The legend of the Ring must have been long in growing to the form in which it is found in the Talmud, where it is said that Solomon's "fear in the night" arose from his apprehension that the Devil might again get hold of his Ring, with which he (Aschmedai) once wrought much mischief. (Gittin. Vol. 68, col. 1, 2). The hymn strikes me as late Alexandrian: