Absence is making me fond of smutty poetry. I'm looking forward to my wife's return in a few days.
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John Peale Bishop
The Collected Poems of John Peale Bishop, edited by Allen Tate (New York & London, 1948).
Written circa 1928
Boys, by girls held in their thighs,
Shudder, and turn back their eyes.
It is as well they never see
The brute approach of ecstasy.
First read here.
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If you took freshman english and were forced to buy "The Norton Anthology of English Literature", chances are that this poem was in it. Short Biography.
Robert Herrick (1591-1674)
Episcopal minister. Died and was buried a bachelor in 1674 at the age of eighty-three.
The Vine
I dreamed this mortal part of mine
Was metamorphosed to a vine,
Which crawling one and every way
Enthralled my dainty Lucia.
Methought her long small legs and thighs
I with my tendrils did surprise;
Her belly, buttocks, and her waist
By my soft nervelets were embraced.
About her head I writhing hung,
And with rich clusters (hid among
The leaves) her temples I behung,
So that my Lucia seemed to me
Young Bacchus ravished by his tree.
My curls about her neck did crawl,
And arms and hands they did enthrall,
So that she could not freely stir
(all parts there made one prisoner).
But when I crept with leaves to hide
Those parts which maids keep unespied,
Such fleeting pleasures there I took
That with the fancy I awoke;
And found (ah me!) this flesh is mine
More like a stock than like a vine.
2 comments:
At first I read this as, "Abstinence is making me fond of smutty poetry." But then, I just woke up.
The first poem is the better one.
Shouldn't the last line of the 2nd poem be "more like a STALK than like a vine?"
-a guess from your friend and nitpicky reader, in Vegas
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