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 amoung 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!

                         -- Robert Graves