ΕΡΩΣ & Eros

1. Will Smith Forrest Voight Jerry Yeh ΕΡΩΣ & Eros

2. Robert Bridges • Robert Bridges was born in England in 1844. • Bridges’ father died in 1853 and his mother remarried a year later. • Bridges originally intended to enter the religious life in the Church of England, but instead became a physician. • In 1882, Bridges contracted pneumonia and retired from his work as a physician, devoting himself to literature instead. • Robert Bridges married Monica Waterhouse in 1884. • World War I and Bridge’s son’s wounding, led to Bridges writing fiercely patriotic poems and letters. • Robert Bridges died in 1930.

3. Anne Stevenson • Born in Cambridge, England in 1933 • While pursuing a master's degree in music at the University of Michigan, she studied with Donald Hall, who encouraged her to pursue poetry instead." • Always writes in free-verse • She was also a peer of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes • She claims that "poems come to me as tunes in the head. Words fall into rhythms before they make sense. It often happens that I discover what a poem is about through a process of listening to what its rhythms are telling me.”

4. Why hast thou nothing in thy face?Thou idol of the human race,Thou tyrant of the human heart,The flower of lovely youth that art;Yea, and that standest in thy youthAn image of eternal Truth,With thy exuberant flesh so fair,That only Pheidias might compare,Ere from his chaste marmoreal formTime had decayed the colours warm;Like to his gods in thy proud dress,Thy starry sheen of nakedness.Surely thy body is thy mind,For in thy face is nought to find,Only thy soft unchristen’d smile,That shadows neither love nor guile,But shameless will and power immense,In secret sensuous innocence.O king of joy, what is thy thought?I dream thou knowest it is nought,And wouldst in darkness come, but thouMakest the light where’er thou go.Ah yet no victim of thy grace,None who e’er long’d for thy embrace,Hath earned to look upon thy face. ΕΡΩΣby Robert Bridges

5. Why hast thou nothing in thy face?Thou idol of the human race,Thou tyrant of the human heart,The flower of lovely youth that art;

6. Yea, and that standest in thy youthAn image of eternal Truth,With thy exuberant flesh so fair,That only Pheidias might compare,

7. Ere from his chaste marmoreal formTime had decayed the colours warm;Like to his gods in thy proud dress,Thy starry sheen of nakedness.

8. Surely thy body is thy mind,For in thy face is nought to find,Only thy soft unchristen’d smile,That shadows neither love nor guile,

9. But shameless will and power immense,In secret sensuous innocence.O king of joy, what is thy thought?I dream thou knowest it is nought,

10. And wouldst in darkness come, but thouMakest the light where’er thou go.Ah yet no victim of thy grace,None who e’er long’d for thy embrace,Hath earned to look upon thy face.

11. I call for love But help me, who arrives? This thug with broken nose And squinty eyes. ‘Eros, my bully boy, Can this be you, With boxer lips And patchy wings askew?’ ‘Madam,’ cries Eros, ‘Know the brute you see Is what long overuse Has made of me. My face that so offends you Is the sum Of blows your lust delivered One by one. We slaves who are immortal Gloss your fate And are the archetypes That you create. Better my battered visage, Bruised but hot, Than love dissolved in loss Or left to rot.’ Εrosby Anne Stevenson

12. I call for love But help me, who arrives? This thug with broken nose And squinty eyes.

13. ‘Eros, my bully boy, Can this be you, With boxer lips And patchy wings askew?’

14. ‘Madam,’ cries Eros, ‘Know the brute you see Is what long overuse Has made of me.

15. My face that so offends you Is the sum Of blows your lust delivered One by one.

16. We slaves who are immortal Gloss your fate And are the archetypes That you create.

17. Better my battered visage, Bruised but hot, Than love dissolved in loss Or left to rot.’