For me, the naked and the nude <br />(By lexicographers construed <br />As synonyms that should express <br />The same deficiency of dress <br />Or shelter) stand as wide apart <br />As love from lies, or truth from art. <br /> <br />Lovers without reproach will gaze <br />On bodies naked and ablaze; <br />The Hippocratic eye will see <br />In nakedness, anatomy; <br />And naked shines the Goddess when <br />She mounts her lion among men. <br /> <br />The nude are bold, the nude are sly <br />To hold each treasonable eye. <br />While draping by a showman's trick <br />Their dishabille in rhetoric, <br />They grin a mock-religious grin <br />Of scorn at those of naked skin. <br /> <br />The naked, therefore, who compete <br />Against the nude may know defeat; <br />Yet when they both together tread <br />The briary pastures of the dead, <br />By Gorgons with long whips pursued, <br />How naked go the sometimes nude!<br /><br />Robert Graves<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-naked-and-the-nude/
