The Winter Is Past
8 The voice of my beloved! Behold, he comes, leaping on the mountains, skipping on the hills. 9 My beloved is like a roe or a young deer. Behold, he stands behind our wall! He looks in at the windows. He glances through the lattice. 10 My beloved spoke, and said to me, “Rise up, my love, my beautiful one, and come away. 11 For behold, the winter is past. The rain is over and gone. 12 The flowers appear on the earth. The time of the singing has come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land. 13 The fig tree ripens her green figs. The vines are in blossom. They give out their fragrance. Arise, my love, my beautiful one, and come away.”
He arrives with the spring, and the invitation offers the changed world itself as the whole argument for coming out.
She hears him before she sees him: the voice of my beloved. Then the approach — leaping on the mountains, bounding over the hills, a gazelle's gait. The Song's lovers are always arriving with energy. Nobody strolls in this book.
Then the exact staging of verse 9: he stands behind our wall, gazing through the windows, glancing through the lattice. Nearness with a barrier still between. The poem is precise about thresholds, the last thin layer before presence. It lets him stand there, looking in, before anyone moves.
What he says through the lattice is the most famous spring poetry in Scripture, and it is worth noticing what kind of speech it is. Rise up, my love, and come away — then the evidence. The winter is past, the rains over and gone. Flowers appear on the earth, and the season of singing arrives. The turtledove sounds in the land — the migrant whose return announces spring. The fig ripens; the vines blossom and give out fragrance. Every line is a reason to move.
He makes no argument beyond the season itself. The created world has turned toward warmth and increase, and the invitation is to match it. The year itself is on love's side, and staying indoors becomes the one unnatural act.
settled What this mark means