"The Naked and the Nude."

I was just talking about the naked/nude distinction, a propos of some blather on NPR. The NPR position, which I called "so NPR" was: "In fine art, the female body is a nude. In not-so-fine art, she's naked."

A reader emailed:

From my high school days, I recall a line from a poem contrasting naked and nude. Through the magic of the Internet, I am able to retrieve the entire poem. Note that the poet, Robert Graves no less, takes the exact opposite view of the article you cited in your most recent post.

Robert Graves has been in his grave for almost 30 years, and he was born nearly 120 years ago, and yet copyright law is such that I feel I shouldn't copy the whole poem. Counteracting that feeling — and isn't law a feeling? — is the fact that the poem can be found all over the place on the internet, including — I see now — in the comments at the NPR story. So, with all due respect to Sonny Bono and with near certainty that I'm doing the heirs of Robert Graves a favor, let's read the poem. Remember, the question on the floor is whether Graves takes "the exact opposite view" from NPR.

The Naked and the Nude

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 sometime nude!