For me, the naked and the nude 

	(By lexicographers construed

	As synonyms that should express

	The same deficiency of dress

	Or shelter) stand as wide apart

	As love from lies, or truth from art.


	Lovers without reproach will gaze

	On bodies naked and ablaze;

	The Hippocratic eye will see

	In nakedness, anatomy;

	And naked shines the Goddess when

	She mounts her lion among men.


	The nude are bold, the nude are sly

	To hold each treasonable eye.

	While draping by a showman's trick

	Their dishabille in rhetoric,

	They grin a mock-religious grin

	Of scorn at those of naked skin.

	The naked, therefore, who compete

	Against the nude may know defeat;

	Yet when they both together tread

	The briary pastures of the dead,

	By Gorgons with long whips pursued,

	How naked go the sometimes nude!