"The Temple of Venus" by Soame Jenyns (poetry reading)

Soame Jenyns was a man of rare sensibilities for his time. He wrote a disquisition, "On Cruelty to Animals," and another on "The Nature and Origins of Evil".
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/jenyns/evil.iii.html

His writings were criticised for their licentiousness but that's hardly significant these days. What is surprising is how few poems have been written on this topic which is so near to men's hearts..

This is the only other example I can think of is A.D Hope:

When like the sun I warm her snow,
She smiles above and melts below
And my caress between her thighs
Revives the dew of paradise.

Those Glands of Bartholin I bless,
The sweet wild honey they express,
The exquisite faint scent they bring,
Of mountain flowers in early spring.

O, let me be your bee and rove
The heaths and tufted slopes of love,
Gather that honey all day long
And breathe its fragrance in my song.

There are bawdy rhymes, mostly written in the Edwardian Age when there little entertainment and men would amuse their companions with bawdy jokes and smoking-room stories:

The Doctor's Complaint.

The portions of a woman
that appeal to Mans depravity
Are fashioned with considerable care;
And what at first appears to be a common little cavity
Is really an elaborate affair.

Now, doctors of distinction
have examined these phenomena
In numerous experimental dames,
And given to these ornaments
of feminine abdomena,
A number of delightful Latin names.

There is the vulva, the vagina,
and the good old perineum
And the hymen, in the case of certain brides.
And there are lots of other gadgets,
you would just love if you could see em,
The clitoris and God knows what besides.

Now, isnt it a pity that when common people chatter
Of the mysteries to which I have referred,
They give to this so vital and so elegant a matter,
Such a very short and ugly little word.

The Womans Retort

You erudite philosophers are really rather comical
Despite your pseudo-scientific facts,
For all your heated arguments
on matters anatomical
Have very little bearing on your acts.

You may agree to differ
and make learned dissertations
On the relative importance of a name,
But we women find that when it comes
to intimate relations,
Your reactions are essentially the same.

Moreover, when you analyze,
in phrases too meticulous
Our relatively simple little vent,
You overlook the verbiage,
so rude and so ridiculous,
Which designates the gadgets of a gent.

But then perhaps it is because
you find the emblems of virility
So very, very difficult to hide,
That your jealousy induces you
to scoff at our ability
To tuck away our privacies inside.


The temple of Aphrodite is at the Acropolis (Aphrodite and Venus are the same goddess)

"Venus Dormida" was by Giorgione in 1501

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[checotahkid]

LOVE IT, hadn't that in a long long, long, time.Thank-you for thinking of me and sharing your video with me.