Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Temptation

     

“Knowing was a temptation. What you don’t know won’t tempt you.”— Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

SOURCE

“For me, temptation is life and I have a gargantuan appetite for everything.”— Felix Dennis

Midweek Motif ~ Temptation

Desiring something wrong or unwise is Temptation.

But isn’t it something extremely interesting and delightful once in a while? And powerful? How do you deal with it? Do you give in? Don’t you?

What tempts you most and seduces you to sin? 

Or how do you resist the temptation?

A couple of poems here:

The Temptation

by Charles Baudelaire

THE Demon, in my chamber high,
This morning came to visit me,
And, thinking he would find some fault,
He whispered: "I would know of thee

Among the many lovely things
That make the magic of her face,
Among the beauties, black and rose,
That make her body's charm and grace,

Which is most fair?" Thou didst reply
To the Abhorred, O soul of mine:
"No single beauty is the best
When she is all one flower divine.

When all things charm me I ignore
Which one alone brings most delight;
She shines before me like the dawn,
And she consoles me like the night.

The harmony is far too great,
That governs all her body fair,
For impotence to analyse
And say which note is sweetest there.

O mystic metamorphosis!
My senses into one sense flow--
Her voice makes perfume when she speaks,
Her breath is music faint and low!"

As By Fire

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Sometimes I feel so passionate a yearning
    For spiritual perfection here below,
This vigorous frame with healthful fervour burning,
    Seems my determined foe.

So actively it makes a stern resistance,
    So cruelly sometimes it wages war
Against a wholly spiritual existence
    Which I am striving for.

It interrupts my soul's intense devotions,
    Some hope it strangles of divinest birth,
With a swift rush of violent emotions
    Which link me to the earth.

It is as if two mortal foes contended
    Within my bosom in a deadly strife,
One for the loftier aims for souls intended,
    One for the earthly life.

And yet I know this very war within me,
    Which brings out all my will-power and control,
This very conflict at the last shall win me
    The loved and longed-for goal.

The very fire which seems sometimes so cruel
    Is the white light, that shows me my own strength.
A furnace, fed by the divinest fuel,
    It may become at length.

Ah! when in the immortal ranks enlisted,
    I sometimes wonder if we shall not find
That not by deeds, but by what we've resisted,
    Our places are assigned.

Please share your new poem using Mr. Linky below and visit others in the spirit of the community—

              (Next week Susan’s Midweek Motif will be ~ Writing Prose.)