Love is not a Weekend of Tourism Looking at Statues in Paris

This love is like a marble statue in

Warm standing form. Ferrara marble carved

In noontime, and as free from dark stained sin

As if the shadows with it have been starved

Of wickedness, presents its stone-bright shape

Of sunlight. More perhaps as if the shades

Were not created there beneath the nape

Of neck at all, as if there were not grades

Of pale and paler gray beneath its hips,

Beside raised shoulders ripe in sculpture, strength,

Or caught in beauty in between its lips,

This love is true love, upright, tall in length.

An evil might be lurking somewhere near

But ill is banished in this loving here.

……….