The Naked And The Nude by Robert Graves

The Naked And The Nudeby Robert Graves







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!