The 17th century poet, Robert Herrick, clergy-man and bachelor, said a lot more than his prayers:
Upon The Nipples Of Julia's Breast
Have ye beheld (with much delight)
A red rose peeping through a white?
Or else a cherry (double graced)
Within a lily? Centre placed?
Or ever marked the pretty beam
A strawberry shows half drowned in cream?
Or seen rich rubies blushing through
A pure smooth pearl, and orient too?
So like to this, nay all the rest,
Is each neat niplet of her breast.
John Donne, very smartly, uses a very small creature to address his not so tiny lust in 'On a Flea on his Mistress’s Bosom’, and starts,
“MADAM, that flea which crept between your
breasts
I envied, that there he should make his rest;
The little creature’s fortune was so good
That angels feed not on so precious food.”
I particularly like
his poetic take on the modern ‘get your kit off in
Elegies XX. To his Mistress Going to Bed
“ Off with that girdle, like heaven’s zone
glittering,
But a far fairer world encompassing.
Unpin that spangled breast-plate, which you wear,
That th’ eyes of busy fools may be stopp’d there.
Unlace yourself…………………………….”
Now, would I have the nerve for this:
Elegy XVIII: Love’s Progress
Now, would I have the nerve for this:
Elegy XVIII: Love’s Progress
Her swelling lips; to which when we are come,
We anchor there, and think ourselves at home,
For they seem
all: there sirens’ songs, and there
Wise Delphic
oracles do fill the ear;
There in a
creek where chosen pearls do swell,
The remora, her
cleaving tongue doth dwell.
These, and the
glorious promontory, her chin
O’erpast; and
the strait Hellespont between
The Sestos and
Abydos of her breasts,
(Not of two
lovers, but two loves the nests)
Succeeds a
boundless sea, but that thine eye
Some island
moles may scattered there descry;
And sailing
towards her India, in that way
Shall at her
fair Atlantic navel stay;
Though thence
the current be thy pilot made,
Yet ere thou be
where thou wouldst be embayed,
Thou shalt upon
another forest set,
Where some do
shipwreck, and no further get.
When thou art
there, consider what this chase
Misspent by thy
beginning at the face.
Yegods!
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