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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
TO THE UNKNOWN EROS: BOOK 2: 7. TO THE BODY, by COVENTRY KERSEY DIGHTON PATMORE Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: Creation's and creator's crowning good Last Line: Quick, tender, virginal, and unprofaned! Subject(s): Bible; Elijah; Feet; Hair; Mary. Mother Of Jesus; Women In The Bible; Virgin Mary | |||
Creation's and Creator's crowning good; Wall of infinitude; Foundation of the sky. In Heaven forecast And long'd for from eternity, Though laid the last; Reverberating dome, Of music cunningly built home Against the void and indolent disgrace Of unresponsive space; Little, sequester'd pleasure-house For God and His Spouse; Elaborately, yea, past conceiving, fair, Since, from the graced decorum of the hair, Ev'n to the tingling, sweet Soles of the simple, earth-confiding feet, And from the inmost heart Outwards unto the thin Silk curtains of the skin, Every last part Astonish'd hears And sweet replies to some like region of the spheres; Form'd for a dignity prophets but darkly name, Lest shameless men cry "Shame!" So rich and wealth conceal'd That Heaven and Hell fight chiefly for this field; Clinging to everything that pleases thee With indefectible fidelity; Alas, so true To all thy friendships that no grace Thee from, thy sin can wholly disembrace; Which thus 'bides with thee as the Jebusite, That, maugre all God's promises could do, The chosen People never conquer'd quite; Who therefore lived with them, And that by formal truce and as of right, In metropolitan Jerusalem. For which false fealty Thou needs must, for a season, lie In the grave's arms, foul and unshriven, Albeit, in Heaven, Thy crimson-throbbing Glow Into its old abode aye pants to go, And does with envy see Enoch, Elijah, and the Lady, she Who left the roses in her body's lieu. O, if the pleasures I have known in thee But my poor faith's poor first-fruits be, What quintessential, keen, ethereal bliss Then shall be his Who has thy birth-time's consecrating dew For death's sweet chrism retain'd, Quick, tender, virginal, and unprofaned! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...MADONNA by KATHARINE LEE BATES BALLADE TO OUR LADY OF CZESTOCHOWA by HILAIRE BELLOC OUR LORD AND OUR LADY by HILAIRE BELLOC PLASTIC BEATITUDE by LAURE-ANNE BOSSELAAR A SONG OF MARY by LUCILLE CLIFTON ISLAND MARY by LUCILLE CLIFTON MARY'S DREAM by LUCILLE CLIFTON A LONDON FETE by COVENTRY KERSEY DIGHTON PATMORE |
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