sequence in verse 8 and precisely reversed fauna-mountain sequence in verse 17 make too literary a chiasmus to be happenstance. The whole, including the lover’s paean to spring, is a soliloquy of the woman. She imagines him leaping over mountains to come to her and peering through the gate of her parents’ house, imploring her to come out with him into the vernal beauties. She is to lose her shyness, like a dove venturing from her hidden nest in the broken faces of a cliff. In verse 16 she imagines their