Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE VENUS OF MILO, by PAUL ARMAND SILVESTRE


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE VENUS OF MILO, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: No live girl's body hath such pride impassioned
Last Line: Into the squalid vortex of despair.
Alternate Author Name(s): Silvestre, Armand
Subject(s): Beauty; Sculpture & Sculptors; Statues; Venus De Milo


NO live girl's body hath such pride impassioned;
Such beauty is beyond Earth's brittle clay.
From the hard marble was her statue fashioned
In lands where once of old the Gods held sway.

No cruel soul that ever foils love's hoping,
Could hide behind that bosom and that brow;
And those twin summits from her torso sloping
Could sheathe no heart was traitor to its vow.

Like a steep rock her throat leans heavenward, yearning
For pure betrothal with diviner life;
And thwarts the tide of passion in us, spurning
The soiled caresses of our souls at strife.

O Rock upright amid our dust and ashes!
O lantern rising on our bitter strand!
O statue whence the antique thought still flashes
Above us like a tempest-fluttered brand!

O wardress of the sacred stairway spiring
To perfect beauty on the heights afar,
Where we behold with dread our soul's desiring;
O he who did thy marble body mar

Struck deep the poet! For thine arms in breaking,
Daughter of Gods, O deathless Beauty, bare
The souls of all men downward, heav'n forsaking,
Into the squalid vortex of despair.





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