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In Ruth we have a romance of the golden corn-field, and the author chooses the unsophisticated days of the Judges as the setting of his tale. In Canticles we have a contrasted picture between the simplicity of shepherd-life and the urban voluptuousness which was soon to attain its climax in the court of the Ptolemies.
Graetz compares this to Shulammith's refrain in Canticles: I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, By the roes, And by the hinds of the field, That ye stir not up Nor awaken love, Until it please! But in meaning the refrains have an absolutely opposite sense, and, more than that, they have an absolutely opposite function.
The model of our Christian psalms is without doubt given in the canticles which Luke loved to disseminate in his gospel, and which were copied from the canticles of the Old Testament. These psalms and prophecies are, as regards form, destitute of originality, but an admirable spirit of gentleness and of piety animates and pervades them.
I see, indeed, from an interesting article in the Atlantic Monthly for September, 1889, entitled "The Black Madonna of Loreto," that black Madonnas were so frequent in ancient Christian art that "some of the early writers of the Church felt obliged to account for it by explaining that the Virgin was of a very dark complexion, as might be proved by the verse of Canticles which says, 'I am black, but comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem. Others maintained that she became black during her sojourn in Egypt. . . . Priests, of to-day, say that extreme age and exposure to the smoke of countless altar- candles have caused that change in complexion which the more naive fathers of the Church attributed to the power of an Egyptian sun"; but the writer ruthlessly disposes of this supposition by pointing out that in nearly all the instances of black Madonnas it is the flesh alone that is entirely black, the crimson of the lips, the white of the eyes, and the draperies having preserved their original colour.
On the occasion of his brother's death he endeavored to preach a sermon on the Canticles, but broke down as Jerome did at the funeral of Paula. He kept to the last the most vivid recollection of his mother; and every night, before he went to bed, he recited the seven Penitential Psalms for the benefit of her soul.
It is excellent in its style and in its form for the parts of each hour; the antiphons, psalms, canticles, hymns, versicles, follow one another in splendid harmony. The opinions and praises of the saints who dwelt on this matter of the Breviary would fill a volume. Every priest has met with many such eulogies in his reading. Newman's words are very striking.
It is unreasonable for anyone who has seen or read about a Palestinian spring, with its unique beauty of flower and bird and blossom, to imagine that the author of Canticles needed or used second-hand sources of inspiration, however little his drama may have accorded with the life of Jerusalem in the Hellenistic period.
The procession, which had gone forth to fetch the Bishop from the Hospice of Saint Brice, where, in obedience to time-honoured custom, he had slept the night before entering his See, had made its way thither under a fine rain of chanted canticles, broken by heavier showers of brass sounding a pious flourish of trumpets.
The night rang with song also, and in some places as many as a hundred had gathered in company to sing the long Christmas hymns they had learned as little children far away at home endless canticles with endless repetitions, telling the story of the Christ-Child's birth at Bethlehem, of the adoration of the shepherds, and of the coming of the Eastern kings.
And the holy prelate forbade that any one should arouse the beloved of God until she herself would awaken; so did it appear how evidently what is said in the Canticles agreed with her; "I sleep, but mine heart waketh"; for that his heavenly Spouse revealed unto her all His mysteries.
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