Poem

Today in AP English we were assigned to read the poem The Naked and the Nude by Robert Graves for homework. Some of the boys start laughing at the title. I am the discussion director for this poem, so I'm thinking "Oh great, tomorrow people are going to be snickering all while we're trying to talk." I know they will, some people are so immature. It's a good poem, though, so I want to share it.

The Naked and the Nude

For me, the naked and the nude
(By lexicographers construed
As synonyms that should express
The same deficiency of dress
Or shelter) stand as wide apart
As love from lies, or truth from art.

Lovers without reproach will gaze
On bodies naked and ablaze;
The Hippocratic eye will see
In nakedness, anatomy;
And naked shines the Goddess when
She mounts her lion among men.

The nude are bold, the nude are sly.
To hold each treasonable eye.
While draping by a showman's trick
Their dishabille in rhetoric,
They grin a mock-religious grin
Of scorn at those of naked skin.

The naked, therefore, who compete
Against the nude may know defeat;
Yet when they both together tread
The briary pastures of the dead,
By Gorgons with long whips pursued,
How naked go the sometime nude!