V.
(1) I am come into my garden. — This continues the same figure, and under it describes once more the complete union of the wedded pair. The only difficulty lies in the invitation, “Eat, O friends; drink, yea, drink abundantly, O beloved” (Marg., and be drunken with loves). Some suppose an invitation to an actual marriage feast; and if sung as an epithalamium, the song might have this double intention. But the margin, “be drunken with loves,” suggests the right interpretation. The poet, it has been already said (Note, Song of Solomon 2:7), loves to invoke the sympathy of others with his joys, and the following lines of Shelley reproduce the very feeling of this passage. Here, as throughout the poem, it is the “new strong wine of love,” and not the fruit of the grape, which is desired and drunk.
“Thou art the wine, whose drunkenness is all
We can desire, O Love! and happy souls,
Ere from thy vine the leaves of autumn fall,
Catch thee and feed, from thine o’erflowing bowls,
Thousands who thirst for thy ambrosial dew.”
Prince Athanase.