Body

Unclasps her warmed jewels one by one; Loosens her fragrant bodice; by degrees Her rich attire creeps rustling to her knees.

Her gentle limbs did she undress, And lay down in her loveliness.

I fear thee, ancient Mariner! I fear thy skinny hand! And thou art long, and lank, and brown, As is the ribbed sea-sand. 1

A slumber did my spirit seal; I had no human fears: She seemed a thing that could not feel The touch of earthly years. No motion has she now, no force; She neither hears nor sees; Rolled round in earth’s diurnal course, With rocks, and stones, and trees.

The pride of the peacock is the glory of God. The lust of the goat is the bounty of God. The wrath of the lion is the wisdom of God. The nakedness of woman is the work of God.

My mother bore me in the southern wild, And I am black, but O! my soul is white; White as an angel is the English child, But I am black as if bereav’d of light.

And we are put on earth a little space, That we may learn to bear the beams of love, And these black bodies and this sunburnt face Is but a cloud, and like a shady grove.

The naked every day he clad When he put on his clothes.

Hands, that the rod of empire might have sway’d, Or wak’d to ecstasy the living lyre.

Our state cannot be sever’d; we are one, One flesh; to lose thee were to lose myself.

I feel The link of nature draw me: flesh of flesh, Bone of my bone thou art, and from thy state Mine never shall be parted, bliss or woe.

His sleep Was airy light from pure digestion bred.

Adam the goodliest man of men since born His sons, the fairest of her daughters Eve.

Two of far nobler shape erect and tall, Godlike erect, with native honor clad In naked majesty seem’d lords of all.

I am a little world made cunningly Of elements, and an angelic sprite.

Her pure, and eloquent blood Spoke in her cheeks, and so distinctly wrought, That one might almost say, her body thought.

Full nakedness! All joys are due to thee, As souls unbodied, bodies unclothed must be, To taste whole joys.

Those set our hairs, but these our flesh upright.

A bracelet of bright hair about the bone.

Who ever comes to shroud me, do not harm Nor question much That subtle wreath of hair, which crowns my arm; The mystery, the sign you must not touch, For ’tis my outward soul, Viceroy to that, which then to heaven being gone, Will leave this to control, And keep these limbs, her provinces, from dissolution.

Love’s mysteries in souls do grow, But yet the body is his book.

That subtle knot which makes us man: So must pure lovers’ souls descend T’ affections, and to faculties, Which sense may reach and apprehend, Else a great Prince in prison lies.

Our eye-beams twisted, and did thread Our eyes, upon one double string; So to entergraft our hands, as yet Was all the means to make us one, And pictures in our eyes to get Was all our propagation.

With foreheads villainous low.