Charles Ellicott Commentary Song Of Solomon 5:12

"His eyes are like doves beside the water-brooks, Washed with milk, [and] fitly set." — Song Of Solomon 5:12 (ASV)

Fitly set.—Literally, sitting in fullness, which the Margin explains, according to one received method of interpretation, as beautifully set, like a precious stone in the foil of a ring.

If the comparison were to the eyes of the dove, this would be a sufficient interpretation. The image is perfect, owing to the ring of bright red skin around the eye of the turtle-dove.

However, there is no necessity to resort to the figure comparatio compendiana here, since doves delight in bathing. Although there is a certain delicious haze of indistinctness in the image, the soft iridescence of the bird floating and glancing on the face of the stream might not too extravagantly suggest the quick, loving glances of the eye. Keats has a somewhat similar figure:

“To see such lovely eyes in swimming search
After some warm delight, that seems to perch
Dove-like in the dim cell lying beyond
Their upper lids;”

Dr. Ginsburg also aptly quotes from the Gitagovinda: “The glances of her eyes played like a pair of water-birds of azure plumage, that sport near a full-grown lotus in a pool in the season of dew.”

The words washed in milk refer to the white of the eye, which swells around the pupil like the fullness of water, that is, the swelling wave around the dove. The parallelism is like that of Song of Solomon 1:5.