THE VENUS DE' MEDICI
"Nec fuerat nudas pæna
videre Deus."
A GODDESS should be naked unashamed!
This, and that Venus the Capitoline,
And others, is their attitude divine
Or human? Are these fair Nymphs rightly named?
On undraped deity man might look unblamed:
And did she, conscious Victress, half decline
Her prowess, like this shy girl Florentine,
When the great Three the apple of discord claimed?
It may be ― for she is lovelier than all thought:
In every delicate yet redundant curve
Voluptuous, in her virginal reserve,
The most delicious woman ever wrought
In marble, to a rhythmic melody
That hath an echo of divinity!
Art Sonnets V. Poems of Many Years
and Many Places (1881), 164.
