Roving Hands

   Last night I was reading love poetry with a friend while we painted our nails in her bathroom (as you do). I came across this poem about love and lust by John Donne.  It is so deliciously seductive, I offer it to you today for a seduction break.  I am only posting an excerpt, and please know that this is excerpt must be read several times in order to feel the full impact.  

    So often we are looking for the something that will give us the fastest result possible in life, ike a rhyme we will understand from the get-go.  We can't think of having our day interrupted by trying to understand phrases that were written 500 years ago. But classic poetry, like a piece of fine chocolate, demands to be savored.  It does not seek to satisfy, it seeks to seduce.  

   

   Take a few minutes wherever you are in your day to absorb the ancient beauty and intensity of this passionate man, as he describes the body of his Goddess as she prepares to come to bed.

Venus of Urbino by Titian

Excerpt from "To His Mistress Going To Bed"

By John Donne

Licence my roving hands, and let them go,   

Before, behind, between, above, below.

O my America! my new-found-land,

My kingdom, safeliest when with one man mann’d,

My Mine of precious stones, My Empirie,

How blest am I in this discovering thee!

To enter in these bonds, is to be free;

Then where my hand is set, my seal shall be.

Full nakedness! All joys are due to thee,

As souls unbodied, bodies uncloth’d must be,

To taste whole joys. Gems which you women use

Are like Atlanta’s balls, cast in men’s views,

That when a fool’s eye lighteth on a Gem,

His earthly soul may covet theirs, not them.

Like pictures, or like books’ gay coverings made

For lay-men, are all women thus array’d;

Themselves are mystic books, which only we   

(Whom their imputed grace will dignify)

Must see reveal’d. Then since that I may know;

As liberally, as to a Midwife, shew

Thy self: cast all, yea, this white linen hence,

There is no penance due to innocence.