1. My son, keep my words,and treasure my commands.
2. Keep my commands and live,and my teaching as the apple of your eye;
3. Bind them on your fingers,write them on the tablet of your heart.
4. Say to Wisdom, “You are my sister!”Call Understanding, “Friend!”
5. That they may keep you from a stranger,from the foreign woman with her smooth words.
6. For at the window of my house,through my lattice I looked out
7. And I saw among the naive,I observed among the young men,a youth with no sense,
8. Crossing the street near the corner,then walking toward her house,
9. In the twilight, at dusk of day,in the very dark of night.
10. Then the woman comes to meet him,dressed like a harlot, with secret designs.
11. She is raucous and unruly,her feet cannot stay at home;
12. Now she is in the streets, now in the open squares,lurking in ambush at every corner.
13. Then she grabs him, kisses him,and with an impudent look says to him:
14. “I owed peace offerings,and today I have fulfilled my vows;
15. So I came out to meet you,to look for you, and I have found you!
16. With coverlets I have spread my couch,with brocaded cloths of Egyptian linen;
17. I have sprinkled my bed with myrrh,with aloes, and with cinnamon.
18. Come, let us drink our fill of love,until morning, let us feast on love!
19. For my husband is not at home,he has gone on a long journey;