WeRead Powered by ReaderPub
The Hoofs of Pegasus cover

The Hoofs of Pegasus

Chapter 25: TO BOTTICELLI’S VENUS
By Letitia Stockett
Open in WeRead

Explore more books like this:

Poetry

About This Book

A collection of short lyrical poems that weave mythic and religious imagery with intimate observations of nature and interior feeling. Many pieces draw on classical figures and Renaissance art, while others reflect domestic scenes, sleep, music, and sacrament; recurrent motifs include night and light, birds, water, and ritual. Voice shifts between contemplative reverie and pastoral detail, exploring longing, faith, and creative impulse. The sequence moves through imagistic vignettes—moonlit meadows, bathing maidens, sacramental harvests, and dreams—linking private emotion to larger spiritual and mythical resonances.

TO BOTTICELLI’S VENUS

IN the early dawning before the sun had risen The wind piped mournfully along the lonely sand, The sea lay desolate, sunless, desolate, There was no light upon the deep or light upon the land.
Before the sun had risen in the cold green twilight Came a Lady from the foam, a Lady wistful eyed, The crinkled waves beneath her feet ran eagerly before her, She drifted in from alien seas at the turn of the tide.
Light came into the world with her. I knelt before her beauty, Her pure and awful nakedness unaware of shame, Her slender fingers hiding the apple of her bosom, Her red gold hair unfilleted blown like a windy flame.
Softly blew the winds about her, softly fell the blossoms, But in her face was sorrow for the long years to be: The kiss beneath the olives, the anguish of betrayal, Her grief was for the wounds of Love, Our Lady of the Sea.