You Are Altogether Beautiful

The man describes the woman piece by piece: eyes like doves, hair like goats descending Gilead, teeth like washed sheep, lips like scarlet, temples like pomegranate, neck like a fortified tower, breasts like twin gazelles. He concludes, “Thou art all fair…there is no spot in thee.”

This kind of praise poem is often called a wasf, using an Arabic term for stylized bodily description. Comparable love poetry appears elsewhere in the ancient Near East, especially Egypt. The comparisons are not anatomical diagrams; they are imaginative associations of movement, color, symmetry, abundance, strength, and value.