TO A GENTLEMAN REFORMER by LOUIS UNTERMEYER

Keep it -- your torn and rotting decency,
Your antique toga with its quaint misfit.
Keep it -- the world has little use for it,
Or swaddled truths too bashful to be free.
This is no age for sick humility,
Or queasy goodness without strength enough
To dare the keen and hungry edge of love,
Or Fear that wraps itself in chastity.

Hide in its crumbling folds. How should you know
That virtue may be dirty and can grow
Furtive and festering in a mind obscene.
How should you know the world's glad, vulgar heart,
The sensual health that is the richest part
Of Life: so frankly carnal -- and so clean.

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