“Anatomy” by Stephen Blair, CC ’11

The girl who sits in front of me

In Intro to Anatomy

Is lovely as the laurel tree

And with a glance could shatter me.

When first my sight did chance to light

Upon her curves so ample,

I threw away that book by Gray

To study her example.

For Beauty is the spark of knowledge

(Plato says nothing lesser),

And in Beauty’s prestigious college,

She is full professor.

So close your books, collegiate youth!

Forget Fermat’s equation!

Her beauty is the only truth:

One glance, an education.

Close up your books! Forget your Euler’s

Constant! Smash your lyre!

Unlearn your Latin! Snap your rulers!

Throw into the fire

Historians inveterate

And poets tragicomical:

For in her form hath Nature writ

Perfection anatomical.

One day I chanced to come to class

A minute or two early;

I found her there upon a chair,

Her hands entwined demurely,

Her hair pinned up (Ah, she could look

No lovelier than that to me!);

Her nose was buried in a book:

It was her Gray’s Anatomy.

No one was nigh save she and I,

Nor student nor professor;

In loving wise she raised her eyes,

And thus did I address her:

“O gentle lady, tell me: art

Thou god or art thou mortal?

For, ah! – my every aching part

Thy beauty sets achortle,

And fain would I conclude, thou art

A heaven-dwelling goddess.

But if a tender human heart

Doth beat within thy bodice,

Have pity on a lovelorn youth,

Love-maddened by your figure,

Beauty’s own image! (Though, in truth,

Your pelvis could be bigger,

But we’ll let that alone.) Oh, I

Could spend a lifetime gazing

On thee; how thy calcanei

Do set my marrow blazing!

How graceful thy navicula!

How lissome is thy femur!

How sweet is thy clavicula,

As sleep to the dreamer,

And how I’ve dreamt, with tearful eye,

That cradled in my lap you lay,

Whilst I did ply my humeri

About your snow-white scapulae!

O let me drape my radii

Across thy smooth patella

And plant a trembling kiss on thy

Superior maxilla,

And press your os frontale fast

Against my lovestruck sternum,

Send shivers running through my filum

Terminale internium!

In vain I vaunt your beauty, for

I have not words to tell it in;

But ne’er did I – nor shall I more

Behold so fine a skeleton.

For skin and hair may rip and tear

And Time our flesh may sever;

All mortal clay will soon decay,

But bones endure forever.”

Thus spake I – and she blushed! – but not

The blushing of a lover:

She seemed, with bubbling rage red-hot,

About to boil over.

Alas, how women change their moods,

And how their temper ranges!

For with a shriek she smote my cheek

With her distal phalanges.

A yellow bruise did straight suffuse

My cheek, where she had hit it,

And with an oath (which I am loth

T’repeat, so I omit it),

She said, “All men are of a par:

A lewd, lascivious lot,

As pesky as mosquitoes are,

And worthier to swat.

Hence from my sight! No closer come,”

She said, “by Saint Cecilia!

If men could use their cerebrum

Like their membra virilia!”