Sensualism (a.k.a. Sensual Love, in The Maniac)
Beneath a low front, where the loosened curls
Lurk, snare-like, in laborious unconcern,
Large eyes their languid orbs voluptuous turn,
Till the fired brain of giddy Folly whirls;
With conscious tempting her full lip unfurls
Its honied blossoms, and the red cheeks bum
With pride and shame, whose fire, ye well discern,
Sullies their crystal'd amethysts and pearls.
Her mien invites, while her just lifted hand
Repels, coquetting, but to beckon back;
On purples couched, by dizzying odors fanned,
She sighs her breath, with poison on its track,
And hearts are withered in its hot simoon,
Like dewless flowers amid a tropic noon.
- Title
- Sensualism (a.k.a. Sensual Love, in The Maniac)
- Alternative Title
- Beneath a low front, where the loosened curls
- Date
- 1849 (latest)
- Bibliographic Citation
- George Shepard Burleigh, The Maniac: and Other Poems. Philadelphia: J.W. Moore, 1849, 199-200.
- George S. Burleigh Papers, 1825-1902. John Hay Library, Brown University. Small Scrapbook 98
- Related resource
- part of a set of four poems, titled "Tableaux" in The Maniac
-
Tableaux
-
Pure Love
-
Moral Heroism
-
Martial Heroism
- Subject
- Exaggerated lurid parody of sensual love
