The Little Foxes
14 My dove in the clefts of the rock, in the hiding places of the mountainside, let me see your face. Let me hear your voice; for your voice is sweet and your face is lovely. 15 Catch for us the foxes, the little foxes that plunder the vineyards; for our vineyards are in blossom. 16 My beloved is mine, and I am his. He browses among the lilies. 17 Until the day is cool, and the shadows flee away, turn, my beloved, and be like a roe or a young deer on the mountains of Bether.
Between invitation and belonging the poem inserts a warning about small ruiners, and the first ownership formula puts his belonging first.
She is a dove in the clefts of the rock, hidden in the mountainside. What he asks for is not display but presence: let me see your face, let me hear your voice. The reasons he gives are the plainest compliments in the book — your voice is sweet, your face is lovely. The Song's lovers keep asking each other to speak. The voice is praised as often as the body.
Then verse 15, in a plural voice: catch for us the foxes, the little foxes that plunder the vineyards, for our vineyards are in blossom. The enemies of a ripening love are small, early, and plural. The poem does not name them — carelessness, intrusion, the small spoilers every couple could list. The refusal to name them is the point. Whatever they are in a given case, they are caught while the vines are in flower, not after the fruit is lost.
Verse 16 gives the first of the book's three ownership formulas: my beloved is mine, and I am his. His belonging stands first; hers answers. The formula returns twice with its order shifting Song of Solomon 6:3 Song of Solomon 7:10, and the shift is one of the quietest arguments the book makes.
The scene closes with a clock. Until the day breathes and the shadows flee, be a gazelle on the cleft mountains. Desire in the Song keeps honest time — until is one of its favorite words.
settled What this mark means