THE HIDDEN PARADISE
Our passion is a secret Paradise—
Eden of lotos and the fruitful date,
With silence walled and held undesecrate
By man or prying seraph: We are wise
As any god and goddess, who have wrung
From roseal fruitage of a bough forbidden,
The happy wine we drink, we drink unchidden,
Deep in the vales where vernal leaves are young,
And the first poppies loiter.**** Though the breath
Of all the gods a bolted storm prepare,
And blood-red gloom of thunders blind the sun,
Shall we not turn, with clinging kisses there,
And, laughing, quaff some dreamless wine of death—
Triumphant still, in mere oblivion?